Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!mailrus!ames!ucsd!hub!hbo
From: hbo@hub.ucsb.edu (Howard Owen)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: EXTRA_HALFBRITE (was V1.3 OS?)
Message-ID: <471@hub.ucsb.edu>
Date: 6 Mar 88 22:40:29 GMT
References: <7425@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Reply-To: hbo@sbphy.ucsb.edu (Howard Owen)
Organization: University of California, Santa Barbara
Lines: 47
Summary: Why limit your market?

In article <7425@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> spencer@eris.berkeley.edu (Randal m. Spencer [RmS]) writes:
				.
				.
>ware people have been saying: I will make product for the machine that 
>Commodore is shipping now.  If you don't have a EHB chip that is your
>problem.  I am not going to not use EHB just to make you happy, most
>people who have 1000's that don't have it have already upgraded to the
>500 or 2000 and just have their 1000 sitting around, the rest will when
>the new chipset comes out.  I don't think that you  are going to be able
>to sit there and not upgrade your hardware.
>
>At the same time, I don't think I can come up with much in the way of
>uses for the EHB mode, I guess that a paint program should have it, and
>it does allow for extra colors when creating a game graphic.
>
>I was the one that conducted the poll to see who had the chip and it is 
>true, ALOT more than a handful made it out without the EHB, but at the
>same time, they have sold as many 500's and 2000's as they ever sold
>1000's, so the market has the majority of it using EHB, and the percentages
>growing on that side daily.  Of course I still have two 1000's that don't
>have that chip, so if anyone can help me out I would appreciate it!

     OK, it seems to me from the above statistics that something like 40% of 
existing Amigas do not have EHB mode. It may sound like I am pulling that number
out of a hat, though I doubt I am grossly in error with my estimate. At any
rate, we can probably agree that non-EHB systems make up a large minority of
Amiga systems. Given this fact, where is the logic in excluding such a large 
chunk of your potential customers if you are developing a software product for 
the (still) thin Amiga market? 

   In an effort to head off flames that would accuse me of being anti-
progressive, let me hasten to add that I was among those that were disappointed
that the 2000 didn't represent a real extension of the 1000's capabilities. I'd
be glad to give up a degree of downward compatibility if it meant I got 2 megs
of chip RAM, or higher non-interlaced screen resolution or a 68020 or ...  What
I got instead was my new 2000, which is so very nearly the same machine 
internally as the 500 and 1000 that it seems a shame to give up compatibility 
for the sake of a feature that we seem to agree is of dubious value.

>Randy Spencer      P.O. Box 4542   Berkeley  CA  94704        (415)222-7595 


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