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From: ckp@grebyn.com (Checkpoint Technologies)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.hardware
Subject: Re: Amiga Custom Chips - why hasn't C= made them faster?
Message-ID: <1991Apr10.215542.11083@grebyn.com>
Date: 10 Apr 91 21:55:42 GMT
References: <1991Apr2.235710.13984@news.iastate.edu> <41008@cup.portal.com> <1991Apr9.150928.21660@sagpd1>
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Organization: Grebyn Timesharing
Lines: 43

In article <1991Apr9.150928.21660@sagpd1> monty@sagpd1.UUCP (Monty Saine) writes:
>In article <41008@cup.portal.com> Fletcher@cup.portal.com (fletcher sullivan segall) writes:
>>You are forgetting the basic history of the Amiga.  Commodore didn't 
>                                                     ^
>    Me thinks you are the one forgetting history!    ^ This part is true,but..
>
>>design the chips in the Amiga, and wouldn't be able to afford to design
>>an equialent chip set from scratch in any case.  The custom chips were
>>hand optimized in NMOS for a home video game.  As such they were designed
>                             ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 
>	This part, if you will remember was the cover story to hide development.
>    R.J Michals (sp) and crew were designing a home COMPUTER. The keyboard 
>    and expansion ports were not an after thought, they had (and have stated
>    such) always designed a COMPUTER, not a video game. It was CBM who cut
>    back the design (i.e. removed internal expansion) to make it less
>    expensive to produce. CBM did not have the foresight at that time
>    (I believe they have since changed their views) to actively pursue the
>    COMPUTER market.

I've heard the story from R J Mical, and from Jay Miner (whom I spoke to
one-on-one about it).

When it all started, there were these investors who wanted to make a game
console, because they saw how the Atari VCS market was growing.  So they
founded the Amiga company, hid it's true purpose behind a facade of
building joysticks, and set Miner and Needle and RJ and the rest to
work.

Well, Miner in particular wanted a True Home Computer, with disk and
keyboard and serial and parallel etc., so he pushed through some design
concessions for that purpose. But he wasn't allowed to increase the cost,
so the disk controller and the serial port went into Paula because it
had room, to avoid the cost of the disk controller and serial port
chips.

As it turned out, these concessions saved the machine. The game console
market dried entirely up, and the original investors lost interest.
There still was no game console market when Commodore bought Amiga.
-- 
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