Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!mit-eddie!ll-xn!ames!amdahl!oliveb!amiga!cbmvax!grr From: grr@cbmvax.UUCP (George Robbins) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: CBM and upgrade paths Message-ID: <2725@cbmvax.UUCP> Date: Wed, 11-Nov-87 11:05:33 EST Article-I.D.: cbmvax.2725 Posted: Wed Nov 11 11:05:33 1987 Date-Received: Sat, 14-Nov-87 02:28:09 EST References: <8711040542.AA29099@violet.berkeley.edu> <2696@cbmvax.UUCP> <5807@jade.BERKELEY.EDU> <4410@well.UUCP> Reply-To: grr@cbmvax.UUCP (George Robbins) Organization: Commodore Technology, West Chester, PA Lines: 113 In article <4410@well.UUCP> ewhac@well.UUCP (Leo 'Bols Ewhac' Schwab) writes: > [ My turn: ] > > I bought an Amiga 1000 in October 1985. > I like it. I'm keeping it. So there. > > What has this got to do with the price of pogo sticks? Well, take > the $C00000 RAM idea, for example. First off, it was a crude hack, executed > purely to save money. All the $C00000 RAM boards I've seen "feel" cheap and > flakey, not to mention the fact that they're useless in the 500 and 2000 Note the the C0 memory was originally part of Amiga's plan for how to have "fast" internal memory for the followup products. As with other aspects of the A1000 slap-on-the-side expansion products, they had little control over what the third party vendors actually shipped. > I think the > $C00000 RAM hack should have been shot down by Amiga the moment it was > proposed. Oh well, that's 20/20 hindsight for you. Um, hard to shoot down your own idea and impossible to control the hackers of the world. The A500 internal expansions cause the same kind of pain, since the power supply isn't intended to support another 1.5 or 2 MB of memory. > I firmly believe that some > brilliant hacker somewhere will come up with a daughterboard that will allow > me to use the new Fat Agnus when it becomes available (Dale Luck told me > he's going to fight for a pin arrangement that at least has a chance of > working in a 1000). Good luck. If it were only a plug in chip, there would be more hope, but remember that you also need to kludge in the additional "chip" memory, requiring some considerable amount of main-board hackery in addition to your daughterboard. The A1000 embodies a number of design tradeoffs that make this an uphill battle. Of course all of these must have been CBM's fault... I can forsee no useful purpose for the video slot that > can't be addressed in another way (suggestions anyone?). The greatest impact is having access to the 12 bits of digital video. Also important is having a nice warm home for audio/visual devices with all the i/o signals and power easily available. If you talk to the third party hardware vendors, you will find that making printed circuit cards is no big deal, the nut cruncher when it comes to getting the product to market is often the casework, power supplys and the capitol requied to make "systems". > I finally met Dave Needle, one of the hardware types at Amiga, now > working for EPYX, working on some secret goodie. I had a very long and > entertaining talk with him, during which, he related numerous war stories > about the birth of the Amiga, and the in-fighting between Amiga and > Commodore. Please remember there are two sides to all these "facts" you relay. I could make a number of equivalently biased negative comments about Amiga but I don't see any particular benefit in this sort of sh*t tossing. > We have a great deal to thank the Amiga Los Gatos staff for. They > *FOUGHT* for what we now call the Amiga 1000. Commodore eventually chipped > away at their kingdom, took their design away, re-designed their machines > themselves (bungling it in the process (face it; there *are* functional > design differences)), re-packaged it, and sold them as the 500 and 2000. > The new machines don't even have the checkmark on them anymore. Instead > they bear the Commodore "chickenhead". Bah! West Chester did the A500 because Los Gatos refused to seriously consider the kind of tradeoffs required to meet the price point for a "consumer Amiga". The whole sidecar/A2000 situation was engendered by the failure of the "Transformer" product to live up to the early claims, and the subsequent failures of several hardware assisted PC compatibility devices the Amiga attempted. > I bear no animosity towards the CATS staff. In fact, I love them > (especially Carolyn Sheppner, for all her source code (the semaphore example > in particular)). It's the egotistical management-type boobs I don't like. > In fact, after listening to Needle, I find it amazing that the Amiga ever > saw the light of day. Leo, if you had the time an opportunity to talk to all the people on both sides of the fence, you'd probably be wondering where most of the "bad guys" went to. There's a tendency to cannonize the dead and castigate the living, but if you look closer you'll find a bunch of people trying to do the best they could, given their personal view of situation and their personal constraints. There's been a lot of noise about corporate cultures, but I suspect what happened is the result of *both sides* failing to develop a productive accomodation to each others needs, coupled with the very real difficulties Commodore was encountering during the same period. > One thing is certain, however. It would have been much worse with > Tramiel at the wheel. And might not have been much better with any other fairy godmother that came along. In reality, only Commodore was willing to pick up the tab. > Anyway, I'm keeping my 1000; I suggest you all do the same. > It feels right. Leo, you wouldn't have bought it if it didn't feel right. However, I suspect there are a large number of people out there who will feel that the A500 is "right" for them, and another group that will feel the same about the A2000. Subjective is just that... -- George Robbins - now working for, uucp: {ihnp4|rutgers|allegra}!cbmvax!grr but no way officially representing arpa: out to lunch... Commodore, Engineering Department fone: 215-431-9255 (only by moonlite)