Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!usc!samsung!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!caesar.cs.montana.edu!ogccse!emory!auc!rar From: rar@auc.UUCP (Rodney Ricks) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: AMIGA Fading? Summary: Fading? How so? Message-ID: <32321@auc.UUCP> Date: 14 Nov 89 21:16:21 GMT References: <3932@nigel.udel.EDU> Reply-To: rar@auc.UUCP (Rodney Ricks) Organization: Atlanta University Center, Atlanta, Ga. Lines: 145 In article <3932@nigel.udel.EDU> WDV91@ccvax.iastate.edu (NetMonster) writes: > > Like it or not, the Amiga is fading, and fading fast. How do you come to that conclusion? > ... The Amiga's main competition -- cheap IBM clones -- have largely > caught up to the Amiga in multitasking capability and ease-of-use. True, there are cheap IBM clones, and true, some PCs can multitask as well and be as easy to use as an Amiga, but the statement as a whole is not true. An IBM PC Compatible with multitasking, ease-of-use, and the performance and capabilities of an Amiga is still an expensive system, much more expensive than a comparable Amiga system. > The gap between the Amiga and its closest rival in features i (The above was probably chopped off because the line was longer than 256 characters long) The gap is large, in terms of price. It's shrinking, but it's still large. > > The following article is from the October 1989 issue of TIME (P. 72): > > "The twin fetes had all the glitz and hoopla of a Hollywood premiere. [glitz deleted] > > "In this case, the focus of attention was the Amiga, a personal computer > introduced by Commodore four years ago, whose sagging sales and fading > image the company is trying to repair." SAGGING sales? FADING image??? Where does this guy get his information from? Why do you believe it just because it's in Time Magazine??? From what I've heard, the Amiga's sales having been RISING recently, not sagging. They have been lagging behind the Mac and the PC Clones in sales, but that's not what was said. The Mac's sales have been lagging behind those of PC Clones. Should we say that the Mac's future is in trouble becuase of this? > Yes, the Amiga's image is fading. No, the Amiga's image is NOT fading. In fact, it is rising dramatically. It is being used by graphic artists, for titling movies, by medical students at UCLA, by scientists and secretaries at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, and in many other places for many different things. More and more, I run into people who have heard about the Amiga, and know that it is not just a game machine. Even Atari ST fans seem to see the Amiga in a better light! :-) > Yes, the Amiga's image is fading. But Commodore can resurrect the Amiga's > image very easily. Here is what Commodore needs to do: IT IS TIME FOR > COMMODORE TO TOTALLY ABANDON THE 68000 MICROPROCESSOR, FOR ALL MODELS > OF THE AMIGA. Yeah, right. Watch most games break, and many other programs, and prices shoot throught the ceiling. Great move. Then people will be talking about about how buggy it is ("look at all of these programs that don't work!"). > The OEM price of the 68020 and 68881 chips has fallen to the price of the > 68000 when the Amiga 1000 was first introduced. What about the price of the support chips needed to make a 68020 look enough like a 68000 to work with the rest of the system? Also remember that the Amiga 1000 came out at $1200 dollars. With 256K. The low-end system needs to be priced lower than that. > ... It is now possible for Commodore to get these chips in large quantities > from Motorola or Hitachi for less than $50 each. They'd have to either include all of the circuitry to make the 68020 look like a 68000, or design a new board. How much would that cost? To get any speed increase, they would either have to have some memory besides chip RAM in the system, and make that extra memory 32-bit RAM. If they increase the clock rate, they would have to use faster RAM chips to get a proportional speed increase, at a greatly increased cost. > Commodore should start immediate development of machines to replace the Amiga 500 and Amiga 2000 when the O.S. 1.4 is finished. These models should be improved with the following features: > >(1) 512K of ROM, containing all of Workbench and AmigaDOS, as well as all the system libraries and devices. This should be done to compete with Commodore's closest competition -- Tandy and Headstart -- which also produce computers with their operating > >(2) 1.76MB floppy drive, to upgrade the Amiga's storage capabilities and > also allow the Amiga to read IBM 1.44MB disks. This is a GOOD idea. Of course, I think it would be a good idea to include a (suitably debugged) CrossDOS with the OS. >(3)68020 running at 14Mhz. Doubling the clock rate requires faster RAM chips to double system speed. The '020 would STILL have to slow down to access Chip RAM, unless you're going to make the Graphics chip run at twice the speed. >(4) The memory should be configured such that all memory is 32-bit RAM, >but the custom chips would access the first 1M as 16-bit RAM. I have looked >at the architecture, and I don't see any reason why this isn't possible. I don't know enough about the hardware to argue that point, so I won't. >(6) The Amiga 500 replacement should have 1M of RAM. I think 1 Mb standard for the 500 would be a good idea. Someone should at LEAST run a cost-benfit analysis of it. > I don't want anyone to tell me that it isn't possible for CBM to sell >a complete 68020 system for less than $1500, and still make a very >substantiale profit on it. Hell, if an engineer friend of mine can turn >an Amiga 1000 into a 68020 system (using I'll let Commodore handle this one. Are you there, Dave? What I think would be better is this: A 500-level machine with a seperate keyboard, an Agnus chip that stays in place, and A GOOD POWER SUPPLY, and a 2000-level machine (in terms of price) running off a 68020. The '020 based 2500 would do nicely (although that would be a difficult feat, price-wise). One more thing, *Bring on the '030 machines!!!* In summary, I don't think the Amiga's image (or sales) can be said to be fading at all. The competition is gaining on us, but that doesn't mean that the Amiga is fading image-wise. > -MB- Rodney -- "We may have come over here in different ships, but we're all in the same boat now." -- Jesse Jackson Rodney Ricks, Morehouse College