Why do people like the Amiga? The library doesn't seem all that impressive tbqh.

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Anonymous Thu Jul 7 19:44:56 2016 No.3343931 [DELETED]

Why do people like the Amiga? The library doesn't seem all that impressive tbqh.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 7 19:47:34 2016 No.3343937 I draw the line at acronyms.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 7 20:24:59 2016 No.3343992 >>3343931 I have unironically jacked off to Sabrina Online before.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 7 20:30:27 2016 No.3344000 File: 35 KB, 1440x1080, maxresdefault.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQpLNCRIxWA

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 7 20:32:06 2016 No.3344004 >>3343992 Yiff in hell >>3343931 Late 80s/Early 90s computer games in high color graphics, significant indie content.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 7 20:40:15 2016 No.3344025 >>3344004 >yiff in hell For some reason I find this phrase more cringe than furries.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 7 20:41:47 2016 No.3344028 Actual preemptive multitasking, 4096 colors and 4-channel audio was kind of a big deal in 1985.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 7 20:43:23 2016 No.3344034 Because it was legitimately good for audio and video editing. Not so much for video games. Most of the time, the best thing about the games on Amiga are their graphics and audio, but not so much their design.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 7 21:04:04 2016 No.3344072 >>3343931 I'm honestly more interested in watching demos than playing games.

Anonymous Fri Jul 8 01:04:27 2016 No.3344462

It had Mindwalker, and when it came to most computer games in the 80's, it had the superior versions of games (And when I mean superior, I mean actually bearable, because DOS was stuck with PC speaker and CGA/EGA graphics for a long time).

Then the 90's came, everyone started to get PCs with soundcards and VGA, and the Amiga was just holding on with it's cheap music and sound capabilities until Doom came around, then Amiga just became niche.

Hilariously enough, they still make modern Amigas that are about over 2000 dollars, but are pretty much obsolete in just about every conceivable way, even the web browser that comes with it (And I'm sure it's the only one that works, since I doubt there's a Firefox for modern Amiga OS) is pretty much obsolete by modern web browsing standards.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 01:07:03 2016 No.3344463 >>3344462 I have seen these modern amigas you speak of, although not in the wild. They are very pretty machines, but for what purpose do they exist for?

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 01:15:33 2016 No.3344479 File: 39 KB, 321x322, 1455744199956.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>3343931

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 01:24:36 2016 No.3344490 >>3344463 >but for what purpose do they exist for? Probably for autistic British hipster Amiga fanboys to shitpost on about how "PC and Mac are dead! Amiga the best!" Another funfact, you can have a maximum of 4GB of ram in those machines, but

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 01:25:39 2016 No.3344492 >>3344490 The OS only uses 1GB or something low like that It feels bad having a pass and accidentally clicking post when your message isn't finished yet

Anonymous Fri Jul 8 01:35:25 2016 No.3344504

>>3344492
And when I mean uses, I mean the OS can only detect about a maximum of 1GB, and some how Amiga fanboys will argue about this saying "The OS is so solid that you don't need anymore ram" I don't know, I'd be pissed if I ordered my machine with extra ram but the OS for it doesn't even detect it, unless you install linux, but that defeats the purpose of buying a modern Amiga machine when you can just snatch a recently discarded laptop for that, and it would out perform any modern Amiga.

And if modern version of Amiga OS are so great, why isn't there actual software on it, other than the generic open source stuff and emulators?

Yeah, I have been rambling on for about 3 posts about this.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 01:49:15 2016 No.3344525 Because it was significantly cheaper than a comparable PC or Mac, and from 1985-1992 its technical capabilities were pretty impressive.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 02:58:26 2016 No.3344581 >>3343992 you're not alone

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 03:04:19 2016 No.3344583 >>3344504 >And if modern version of Amiga OS are so great, why isn't there actual software on it, other than the generic open source stuff and emulators? Not the sharpest tool in the shed are you?

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 04:05:34 2016 No.3344631 https://youtu.be/UnviWBRJdbM https://youtu.be/jVc9Tah8qSE https://youtu.be/Siwd7b0iXOc https://youtu.be/AvHshuXfGNQ https://youtu.be/TZgO3A5307I https://youtu.be/PiYuq6Ac3a0

Anonymous Fri Jul 8 05:07:40 2016 No.3344671

They have a boxed Amiga for like $200 at my local shop. I'm not sure if I'm ready to get into retro computer collecting, though. It's a lot of space and 80s computers really aren't very convenient. If I was going to start I'd probably get another C64 first since that's the one I have some childhood nostalgia for.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 05:26:51 2016 No.3344695 >>3344028 then the games actually sucked >4 channel audio lol

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 05:27:52 2016 No.3344696 >>3344671 good luck getting a C64 AND a floppy drive for it, which is often even more expensive than the computer itself

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 05:45:29 2016 No.3344707 >>3344504 Does it still run the old software?

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 06:06:48 2016 No.3344727 For a time, it usually had the more "superior" versions of computer games until DOS graphics and sound cards surpassed it and became the defacto PC platform for games

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 06:17:58 2016 No.3344741 >>3344727 85-92ish is a pretty good run for having the edge on graphics

Anonymous Fri Jul 8 06:24:06 2016 No.3344746

That gif in your image was probably made on an Amiga OP. Which should tell you something about why they were impressive back in the day.

I remember that guy's work from the late 90s before stuff like furries were really known in the mainstream, he was a die hard Amiga supporter.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 06:40:22 2016 No.3344760 I liked the amiga for its music and soundchip. Same with the C64, by the way.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 06:53:16 2016 No.3344768 >>3343931 The graphics were superior to the pc's and macs at the time.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 06:54:04 2016 No.3344771 FACT: 60% of all C64s were sold in Europe and 80% of all Amigas Poor Burgers; they couldn't even barely use a computer they invented.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 06:55:29 2016 No.3344773 >>3344771 hello australia-kun

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 06:55:44 2016 No.3344774 >>3344696 Yeesh. Remember in the 90s when you could find them at thrift stores and yard sales for $10?

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 06:57:06 2016 No.3344775 >>3344774 and the best part is commodore intentionally designed all their hardware so you could only buy shit from them so yes, most SD cards adapters for the C64 are completely fucking useless

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 06:57:35 2016 No.3344776 >>3344490 AmigaOS was also not the piece os shit winblow$ or macos was,

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 06:59:25 2016 No.3344779 >>3344771 I heard that about 4 million total Amigas (all models) were sold in its 9 year run, but only 800,000 of them in North America. C64 sales may have been as many as 22 million worldwide with 6-8 million in North America.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 07:00:25 2016 No.3344782 >>3344775 >so yes, most SD cards adapters for the C64 are completely fucking useless Did I just imagine the 1541 Ultimates?

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 07:01:33 2016 No.3344784 >>3344782 *most of the inexpensive ones the 1541 ultimate just isn't worth it i'd rather sell my C64

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 07:02:27 2016 No.3344785 >>3344784 >the 1541 ultimate just isn't worth it Why not?

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 07:03:52 2016 No.3344787 >>3344785 it's 150 euros i dont live in europe so i'd have to import it too, AND the guy makes them in batch as far as i know all this effort just to play some subpar games

Anonymous Fri Jul 8 07:04:33 2016 No.3344789

>>3344779
Also I will note that most C64s were sold here in 1983-86 and sales began tapering off once the NES and PC compatibles became dominant. The thing was still selling briskly in Europe as late as 1992 and in fact production there ended mostly because the cost of manufacturing 1541 drives was going up.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 07:05:35 2016 No.3344791 >>3344787 >all this effort just to play some subpar games Which particular games suck?

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 07:07:20 2016 No.3344792 >>3344791 almost the entire library ultima iv is ok but it's a multi-load game and the only playable version of it for the C64 now is that easyflash version the great gianna sisters suck and so does turrican btw

Anonymous Fri Jul 8 07:07:47 2016 No.3344795
File: 98 KB, 1024x680, Commodore-64-Breadbox-1024x680.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

One other problem for American collectors; most NTSC C64s are the breadbin, not the C64C which is actually better because it has a newer chipset and PCB which runs cooler, uses less power, and is more reliable. C64Cs are much more common in Europe.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 07:08:54 2016 No.3344797 >>3344792 >10,000+ games >can't find a single good one Really now. Also I said nothing about GGS and Turrican and there's no reason to bring those up except to bait Australia-kun.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 07:09:18 2016 No.3344798 >>3344795 im the lucky owner of a NTSC C64C that also has the original SID isn't that rare

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 07:10:20 2016 No.3344803 >>3344797 >there's no reason to bring those up except to bait Australia-kun. i know, that's why i do it i really do mean it, most of it is shovelware created by bedroom programmers

Anonymous Fri Jul 8 07:16:12 2016 No.3344807
File: 246 KB, 1920x703, C64C_Low_Cost_C64E_Retroport_07+$28Large$29.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

The main ICs on the C64C switched to the HMOS process which results in less heat generation than the older NMOS ICs and there's less chips on the board as the 2114 SRAM used for color memory has been integrated into the PLA and memory consists of two 41256 DRAMs instead of the eight 4164s in the breadbin.

So these are definitely better to have than the breadbin, but NTSC C64Cs are on the rare side.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 07:17:14 2016 No.3344808 >>3344803 >i really do mean it, most of it is shovelware created by bedroom programmers Quit playing Yuropoor tape shovelware. Most NTSC games were done by professional devs like Microprose and EA.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 07:20:26 2016 No.3344809 >>3344808 well i did mention ultima iv are you trying to make aus-kun butthurt too? he hates those RPGs and adventure games

Anonymous Fri Jul 8 07:26:33 2016 No.3344816

Seriously, don't believe the line that Yuropoors had better games. They were better at the sound and graphics aspect of them, but actual gameplay/design they fell comically short. Sometimes it's true, like for example the NTSC versions of Bionic Commando and Ikari Warriors for the C64 were a pathetic joke compared to the PAL ones. When it comes to original games (not arcade ports) I will say definitely our games were better, they were higher budget, and made by professionals and not some British teenager with a machine language monitor cartridge.

Microprose, LucasArts, Broderbund, and Activision C64 games compared with the ocean of British tape shovelware? Not even close.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 07:37:59 2016 No.3344829 >>3344807 >So these are definitely better to have than the breadbin Not really, since they have a fucked up SID.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 07:38:37 2016 No.3344831 Even when you go on Lemon64 where they have top 10 game lists, there's usually 6-7 NTSC games on there.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 07:39:29 2016 No.3344834 >>3344829 the originals ARE the fucked up ones though

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 07:41:20 2016 No.3344835 >>3344695 >lol That was 4 channel sampled audio, in a time when typical computers shipped with an AY-3-8910.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 07:42:32 2016 No.3344836 >>3344829 Yes but the 8580 SIDs are more reliable and they sound consistent from chip to chip while every 6581 sounds different.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 07:44:31 2016 No.3344840 >>3344835 i would rather have FM

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 07:48:37 2016 No.3344849 >>3344840 Go back to /a/, weeb.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 08:33:28 2016 No.3344886 >>3344707 No.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 08:53:13 2016 No.3344904 >>3344807 >>3344795 You could always get a C128 which are common and have the newer chipset.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 09:24:20 2016 No.3344928 >>3344840 >i would rather have FM Then why are you starting a thread every day about the genesis having farts for sound?

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 09:25:37 2016 No.3344931 >>3344928 huh?

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 09:53:28 2016 No.3344950 >>3344795 Isn't a PAL C64 preferable because most software was made for that version? Or does that not really matter because it's a computer?

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 09:54:51 2016 No.3344951 >>3344950 Covered in here. >>3344808 >>3344816 >>3344831

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 09:55:01 2016 No.3344953 >>3343931 the atari st is better

Anonymous Fri Jul 8 09:55:35 2016 No.3344956

>>3344950
PAL C64 was preferred by demosceners since the 50hz refresh rate meant that it had 17% more CPU cycles per frame, which was a gigantic advantage when you were doing sick special effects.

Many demosceners went on to become programmers.

Also, C64 was dead in America in the 80s, but in Europe it had dedicated following well into the 90s.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 09:58:12 2016 No.3344960 File: 7 KB, 250x250, img_9320.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>3344956 >Also, C64 was dead in America in the 80s

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 09:58:36 2016 No.3344962 >>3344956 How does it work with the Amiga? I know it had PAL and NTSC-versions, but it had a monitor output with a really weird refresh rate too.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 09:59:33 2016 No.3344964 Why do people like the NES? The library doesn't seem all that impressive tbqh.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 09:59:37 2016 No.3344965 >>3344953 It had a built-in MIDI port and later versions had a standard for joysticks/gamepads with more than one button. Anything more?

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 10:01:21 2016 No.3344972 >>3344964 End yourself, Australia-kun.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 10:03:28 2016 No.3344973 >>3344964 Get over it, Amiga was decent as a computer, but the games aren't good. You grew up playing shit games, hence your bad taste. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utFlAX9RJQM

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 10:04:46 2016 No.3344975 >>3344973 >feeding Australia-kun costanza.jpg

Anonymous Fri Jul 8 10:06:01 2016 No.3344978

>>3344956
the CPU was faster at least

too bad the programmers relied way too fucking much on hacks

anyways here's something mysterious and shitty:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jb-Z_53kJI4
what happened to the colors? the PAL version doesn't look THIS bad

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 10:06:18 2016 No.3344980 >>3344975 >not luring australia-kun shiggy

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 10:07:13 2016 No.3344982 >>3344978 >the CPU was faster at least What CPU was faster?

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 10:08:37 2016 No.3344983 >>3344982 the NTSC one the PAL one actually runs under 1 mhz

Anonymous Fri Jul 8 10:10:20 2016 No.3344984

>>3344960
C64 was actively supported in the US to the end of the decade BUT after 1986 it was increasingly displaced by the NES and PC clones. Although there were enough C64 users to keep new software coming out, most people who wanted a C64 had bought theirs in mid-decade and not many new ones were still being sold here by 1988.

In Europe though, it was still selling like hotcakes in the early 90s and incredibly, production only ended with Commodore's bankruptcy in the spring of 1994.

Anonymous Fri Jul 8 10:15:15 2016 No.3344989

I'd say 1989 was the point where most of the major NTSC devs had dropped C64 support, although Microprose held out a year longer and Origin actually released Ultima VI for it as late as 1991. EA and Activision's 1989 releases were only on 16-bit machines.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 10:19:27 2016 No.3344992 Nintendo games are quite piss-poor compared to many of the European home computer titles like James Pond and Dizzy.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 10:23:04 2016 No.3344995 >>3344779 Also the Amiga was only sold here in 85-90 after which Commodore gave up on the North American market.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 10:25:03 2016 No.3344997 >>3344992 lol

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 10:25:42 2016 No.3344998 Wasn't Commodore's main plant in Pennsylvania shut down by the EPA?

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 10:30:49 2016 No.3345003 >>3344998 You're referring to the MOS plant in Norristown, PA which was operating until 2001, long after Commodore's demise.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 10:46:00 2016 No.3345015 >>3343931 Can she run Quake yet?

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 10:47:50 2016 No.3345017 >>3345015 you're pretty much SOL unless you have a powerpc amiga (lol who the fuck owns that shit)

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 10:49:52 2016 No.3345020 >>3345017 OP's pic eventually upgraded. I think so anyway, I remember discussions about Quake. It's been forever since I last read that furry comic.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 10:51:08 2016 No.3345024 http://www.amiga.org/forums/archive/index.php/t-35283.html lyl let's burglarize the MOS plant and steal any leftover chips in there

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 11:01:01 2016 No.3345035 File: 52 KB, 1573x600, SabOnline01.gif [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>3345020 It's still going on. And yes, it's retro.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 11:08:26 2016 No.3345042 >>3345024 That's about comparable to people thinking anything valuable was in the ET cartridge landfill.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 11:22:56 2016 No.3345050 File: 58 KB, 1280x400, f-19-stealth-fighter-screenshot-title-screen.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] One reason, in two screenshots: Left: Amiga's screenshot Right: MS-DOS screenshot Amiga had better graphics before 1991.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 11:57:36 2016 No.3345085 >>3345050 I dunno, I'm kinda digging that ufo-style plane.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 12:05:12 2016 No.3345095 File: 110 KB, 400x400, 645676.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>3343931 Get that furfag shit out of here.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 12:12:31 2016 No.3345103 >>3345050 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6o89vbZjBAA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYPAKu2sP7w The PC port is good (Microprose had some of the best coders in the business) but it's still not as good as the Amiga.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 12:21:54 2016 No.3345112 File: 442 KB, 1593x1246, amiga.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>3344707 Yes, through emulation, but you're still better off just downloading WinUAE instead of shelling out 2grand

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 12:24:53 2016 No.3345118 >>3345024 >>3345042 You have to remember, only the ICs themselves were made in Norristown; the PCBs and other computer components were made in assorted gook sweatshops in Asia.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 12:29:51 2016 No.3345119 >>3345118 Also apparently no ICs were kept in storage at the plant and would have all been shipped out to the assembly plants in Asia or to authorized service and repair centers.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 12:36:00 2016 No.3345126 >>3344798 The C64C replaced the breadbin in 86, but I assumed the 8580 had already been introduced and none of them had the 6581.

Anonymous Fri Jul 8 12:44:11 2016 No.3345131

As I understand it, Jack Tramiel, president of Commodore, was practically a gangster. In a very unethical scheme, he practically forced MOS to sell out to him for pennies on the dollar. He ramped up demand for calculator ICs, and MOS bought new equipment and hired more people to keep up with the demand. Then suddenly he called them up and said he wouldn't be buying any more, putting MOS in a real bind. Layoffs occurred, and MOS began a downward spiral. Tramiel stepped in and conveniently offered to buy MOS for a low price, and they went for it. They had a huge overstock of the same IC CBM needed but quit buying. The price for the ICs was counted into Tramiel's scheme. When the truth came out, it was too late.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 12:48:05 2016 No.3345138 >>3345131 The history of Amiga: tale of dickish CEOs and wasted opportunities: https://youtu.be/oP1nLzT_t0o

Anonymous Fri Jul 8 12:48:28 2016 No.3345139

>>3345131
Before Jack Tramiel entered on the scene, MOS was a semiconductor manufacturer in Norristown, PA. After the aforementioned "buyout", they changed their chip IDs to CBM-MOS in recognition of their new corporate parent. At some later date, the chip ID was changed again to CSG (for "Commodore Semiconductor Group") in full recognition of the ownership.

The semiconductor foundry was located at 950 Rittenhouse Road in Norristown, PA. According to stuff I've read, MOS started at that location in 1970 by leasing the building from Allen-Bradley. Commodore bought the building outright in 1978 and operated it as their principle chip fab until 1992. After Commodore's demise (spring 1994), the plant management and a group of investors purchased the plant and started GMT Microelectronics (early 1995). GMT eventually went under in 2001.

950 Rittenhouse Road is a 14-acre site in the Valley Forge Corporate Center (an industrial park bordered by Rittenhouse Road and Audubon Road) with a checkered past and is a US EPA "Superfund site". This is a link (http://www.epa.gov/reg3hwmd/fr/2003/01/28.htm)) into the US EPA Region 3 Web site. Apparently the property was again being sold as late as February 2003.

The source of the EPA (groundwater contamination) problems were related to a 1974 leak in a 250-gallon underground concrete storage tank that was installed adjacent to the southeast side of the building. The concrete tank was used to store a waste solution known to contain trichloroethene ("TCE'') and other solvents including trichloroethane ("TCA''), 1,2 dichloroethene, 1,1 dichloroethene, and 1,1 dichloroethane and vinyl chloride (all industrial solvents used in chipmaking). The congrete tank was decomissioned in 1975 and replaced with an unlined steel one which also subsequently leaked.

The corporate center borders a residential development which until the 1990's used well water. Oops...

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 12:50:55 2016 No.3345142 >>3345138 However, Tramiel had nothing to do with the Amiga as he was busy urinating on the corpse of Atari by the time it hit the market.

Anonymous Fri Jul 8 12:52:49 2016 No.3345145

>>3345131
>>3345139
"Tramiel was born as Jacek Trzmiel (some sources also Idek Tramielski or Idek Trzmiel) [4] into a Jewish family, the son of Abram Josef Trzmiel and Rifka Benzkowska.[5]

After the German invasion of Poland in 1939 his family was transported by German occupiers to the Jewish ghetto in Łódź, where he worked in a garment factory. When the ghettos were liquidated his family was sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp. He was examined by Josef Mengele and selected for a work party, after which he and his father were sent to the labor camp Ahlem near Hanover, while his mother remained at Auschwitz. Like many other inmates, his father was reported to have died of typhus in the work camp; however, Tramiel believed he was killed by an injection of gasoline. Tramiel was rescued from the labor camp in April 1945 by the 84th Infantry Division of the US Army."

And that, as they say, explains everything.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 13:15:53 2016 No.3345179 atari st fm 520 was better

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 13:29:08 2016 No.3345193 >>3344004 I can't yiff in hell because if will yiff forever!

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 13:31:21 2016 No.3345197 >>3345095 it's retro, stop being stupid

Anonymous Fri Jul 8 13:49:38 2016 No.3345227

In early 1986, the ineffective Marshall Smith was demoted to director and Irving Gould hired Tom Rattigan, the executive behind the Amiga's initial rollout, as CEO. Gould did not mince words with Rattigan - cut costs any way possible. Rattigan obliged. Significant layoffs followed and the product line was trimmed down. Parts and tech support for the VIC-20 (out of production for over two years now) were finally dropped and the Plus/4 family pulled from sale. Rattigan also enforced tighter reporting at the company's financial department. The breadbin C64 was replaced by the new C64C, which sported a redesigned PCB and newer versions of the core C64 chipset, and made to closer resemble the C128. Commodore's profits for the 1986-87 fiscal year totaled $22 million and the company's cash reserves stood at $46 million, the best showing in four years.

Also that year, the flawed Amiga 1000 was replaced by the Amiga 500 and 2000. The improved models quickly sent Amiga sales soaring over the rival Atari ST. However, on April 22, 1987, Irving Gould declared himself CEO and ejected Rattigan from that position. Although Rattigan's tenure had witnessed a resurgence of company profits, Gould was likely jealous at the credit he received for Commodore's financial turnaround. On the other hand, an increasingly large percentage of Commodore's total sales volume was in Europe. The US market for the company was dwindling, accounting for just 30% of sales in 1987. Over the last year and a half, US sales revenues had shrunk by 53%.

Anonymous Fri Jul 8 13:50:39 2016 No.3345230

Commodore's product plans were also frustrated by continued strong sales of the aging Commodore 64, which continued selling in Europe with great vigor. By the late 80s, with PC clones becoming dominant, the computer market had become a case of sink-or-swim and in fact, Commodore had sold a line of PC compatibles since 1985. There were also plans for a UNIX workstation, but the computer never made it to production. Unfortunately, the PC line failed to make any presence on the US market although European sales were good.

To be fair, the C64 was getting long in the tooth by 1987, now in its sixth year of production. Even though sales were still good, continued reliance on the C64/C128 was harmful to Commodore's image in the long run. The Amiga, although newer, still needed technological updates to stay competitive.

An attempt at a new 8-bit line, the Commodore 65, which was conceived as a "baby" Amiga with 256 color graphics and stereo sound, ended up amounting to naught. Meanwhile, work on Amiga enhancements rarely translated into product. In the spring of 1990, the Amiga line entered the new decade and the 32-bit age with the Amiga 3000, based on the Motorola 68030 CPU. Unfortunately, a companion product, the CDTV, proved a colossal bomb. Two minor updates to the 16-bit Amiga line, the 500+ and A600, proved short-lived.

In 1992, Gould finally pulled the plug on the Commodore 64 after a decade in production. Remarkably, this had less to do with sales, which in Europe were still strong, but the rising expense of manufacturing 1541 disk drives. Also the next-generation Amiga line was showing considerable promise. In late 1992, the Amiga 1200 was released, meant as a budget version and an update to the 5 year old Amiga 500, but had a number of unfortunate design flaws. Even so, sales were encouraging and work began on a new game console, the CD32. The CD32 was able to run CD-ROM Amiga software and in 1993-94 was quite successful.

Anonymous Fri Jul 8 13:52:00 2016 No.3345232

Although Commodore had plans on the table for future Amiga machines based on the HP RISC "Hombre" chipset, this all came to nought. During 1993, software developers began dropping support for the Amiga and the final death rattle came when Commodore were sued by several companies for infringing on their copyrighted hardware bitmap manipulation technology. The courts ruled against Commodore and required them to pay the plaintiffs, but they refused and so the company was summarily barred from selling their products in the US. In the spring of 1994, Commodore's various subsidiaries closed down one-by-one, starting with Commodore of Australia. On April 29, Commodore officially filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. As a final embarrassing footnote, the US ban meant that Commodore had to utilize a bankruptcy court in the Bahamas.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 14:01:31 2016 No.3345243 File: 43 KB, 640x395, aros01_big_signed.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] Nevermind 'why do people like the Amiga?' What I want to know is why Furries were all over it.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 14:03:34 2016 No.3345245 File: 140 KB, 1280x960, australia-kun and his proud parents.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] Amiga had some pretty cool audio software.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 14:04:26 2016 No.3345249 >>3345243 best tool for digital graphics artists at the time. Years later they kept them because habit

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 14:18:44 2016 No.3345278 >>3345230 Lesson learned. Commodore couldn't sell PC compatibles and brother, they sure couldn't have sold no UNIX workstation because by 1985, they were already pigeonholed as the company of the VIC-20 and C64 and there was no escaping it.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 14:23:33 2016 No.3345289 File: 49 KB, 410x380, 1464649649856.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>3345245 dat filename

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 14:26:34 2016 No.3345294 >>3345245 God, that picture always makes me feel bad for the parents.

Anonymous Fri Jul 8 14:32:14 2016 No.3345305

>>3345294
It really is fucking brutal, isn't it?

I always wonder who's holding the camera, since mom is looking at them like she wants them to fucking die.

Dad is just... oof. That poor heartbroken bastard doesn't even have it in him to be angry anymore. He's fucking done.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 14:33:20 2016 No.3345306 >>3345245 >>3345305 >this is what is his grandfather got shot at on the beaches of Iwo Jima for

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 14:40:21 2016 No.3345324 >>3345294 >>3345305 >God forbid my child pursue a lifestyle that makes them happy. EVERYONE must be miserable like me and my pappy before me! I'm not even a furry but you make me cringe. Shut the fuck up.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 14:42:32 2016 No.3345330 >>3345324 Yiff in hell, buddy-boy.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 14:42:34 2016 No.3345331 File: 37 KB, 653x522, tumblr_o53y5pMvbZ1sodwato1_1280.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>3343931 One word: DeluxePaint.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 14:53:42 2016 No.3345358 >>3344583 He's obviously talking about the Amiga fanboys dingus.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 15:34:58 2016 No.3345419 >>3345230 Actually even in 1982, when they were manufacturing a thousand VIC-20s a day, a whopping 60% of Commodore's sales were in Europe.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 15:50:36 2016 No.3345464 >>3345145 If Atari were run by a Jew, how come they failed so miserably? Everyone knows Jews are the best businessmen.

Anonymous Fri Jul 8 15:51:36 2016 No.3345470

>>3345227
Irving Gould had long objected to focusing on the home computer market. He thought in the long run, it wasn't sustainable and it also harmed Commodore's image. Gould urged Jack Tramiel to refocus on the business market which was where the bulk of profits and prestige in the computer industry came from. So he was right. When home computer sales began tumbling in 1984, Commodore were in a precarious situation partially because they lacked a suitable next-generation computer to take on Apple and IBM. Commodore's lack of success in the business market was not for lack of effort, but the business models of the PET were not a major success in the US and the successor B-series line was a total fiasco and hideously expensive to manufacture.

The Amiga came about when ex-Atari employees founded a company called Amiga, Inc to create a next-generation 16-bit game console, but the video game crash soured their plans which led to Tramiel agreeing to buy out the upstart, after which the console was transformed into a full-fledged computer. Unfortunately, the Amiga was not destined to be Commodore's salvation as it was too much of a niche machine. The impressive sound and graphics capabilities seemed to target both graphic artists and gamers, but neither of those were big enough markets to stimulate sales. There were about 250,000 graphics and video studios in the US in the mid-1980s, hardly impressive against the vast market for business software like Lotus 123 and WordPerfect. Also Commodore's insistence on selling computers through big-box retailers like Sears and K-Mart was harmful to their image and made them widely viewed as a manufacturer of toy computers.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 16:06:05 2016 No.3345505 >>3345294 Is there even a story behind the image?

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 16:08:50 2016 No.3345510 >>3345470 The big problem with the Amiga was that it was so advanced that nobody knew how to market the thing. It was the worlds first Multimedia PC, a decade before that became a thing.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 16:09:31 2016 No.3345513 Speaking of demos, I hope you guys remembered about the CPC's 30th. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhh1xZ6OXp8

Anonymous Fri Jul 8 16:14:35 2016 No.3345524
File: 399 KB, 1280x960, tumblr_nniw8r1IEF1sodwato1_1280.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

>>3345510
It did found its niche in analog desktop video. Americans could use Video Toaster system (NTSC only, pic related), in the meantime Euros were using genlocks.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 16:52:10 2016 No.3345590 >>3345510 Or, well, Commodore sure didn't anyway. When you sell a computer at Toys'R'Us, how the fuck do you expect people to take it seriously?

Anonymous Fri Jul 8 16:53:49 2016 No.3345594

In the end, there was also a cultural difference between the US and Europe in that Europeans were willing to buy a new, unproven computer if they liked its features while Americans mostly bought computers based on brand loyalty, in this case IBM loyalty.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 16:57:10 2016 No.3345598 When the Amiga first came out, that was at a time when a lot of computer stores were refusing to stock anything but IBM or Compaq machines.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 17:15:41 2016 No.3345638 >>3344696 Clueless

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 17:17:01 2016 No.3345640 >>3345638 Clearly you've not seen Ebay prices lately.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 17:21:10 2016 No.3345648 hows fs uae compared to winuae?

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 17:26:25 2016 No.3345661 It's pretty bad. I mean, they sold a bazillion C64s and 1541s; there's no justification to charge $100-$200 for them on Ebay.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 17:35:34 2016 No.3345684 >>3345419 I never understood why Commodore had that lack of success with you Murkans.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 17:42:09 2016 No.3345696 >>3345684 Probably because Tramiel always strongly emphasized European sales as he had been born in Poland and retained a soft spot for his homeland.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 17:42:36 2016 No.3345702 >>3345294 I dunno. They don't look that great either.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 17:44:46 2016 No.3345709 >>3345684 Pretty much everyone in Murrka owned a C64, we just preferred playing on NES.

Anonymous Fri Jul 8 17:50:56 2016 No.3345732 [DELETED]

>>3345709
>Pretty much everyone in Murrka owned a C64, we just preferred playing on NES.

That's a bit of an asspull because most US Commodore 64 sales happened before the NES was a thing. In fact the NES had a large part in the dropoff in C64 sales after '86. In fact as early as 1985, there was evidence that C64 sales were slackening a bit and Commodore had quite a few unsold computers in their inventory, although they denied this.

My dad bought his in 84 and that was around the time when most C64 owners bought theirs.

Anonymous Fri Jul 8 17:53:59 2016 No.3345747

>>3345709
>Pretty much everyone in Murrka owned a C64, we just preferred playing on NES.

That's a bit of an asspull because most US Commodore 64 sales happened before the NES was a thing. In fact the NES had a large part in the dropoff in C64 sales after '86. As early as 1985, there was evidence that C64 sales were slackening a bit and Commodore had quite a few unsold computers in their inventory, although they denied this.

My dad bought his in 84 and that was around the time when most C64 owners bought theirs. All the same, the American user base was big enough to keep game developers supporting it to the end of the decade.

Anonymous Fri Jul 8 18:11:22 2016 No.3345782

>>3345747
The 18-22 million sales figure was apparently an exaggeration by Jack Tramiel. In fact it is estimated that more realistically, total C64 sales for its 12 years in production were only about 12 million units and that the all-time peak was in 1984 with about 2.5 million sold. For the remainder of the decade, sales averaged about 1.2 million a year and then finally tapered in the last few years.

The 12 million figure is derived from adding up serial numbers, a slightly tricky job as there are no less than 16 (!) PCB revisions and each one reset the serial number starting at 1. Also most of the initial production run in 1982 did not have any serial number on them.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 18:20:41 2016 No.3345798 Note also that in the last years (1989-93), C64 sales were still quite strong, in fact 4 million during that time and essentially all of them were PAL region.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 18:25:43 2016 No.3345803 File: 171 KB, 1600x685, c64pcbvb.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] My dad's C64 probably had this one, which is from '84 and you can see from the "60" sticker on the RF modulator that it's an NTSC board.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 18:26:40 2016 No.3345805 >>3344809 how do you do that.

Anonymous Fri Jul 8 18:27:35 2016 No.3345807
File: 93 KB, 300x286, apple2gs.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

>>3345798
>Note also that in the last years (1989-93), C64 sales were still quite strong, in fact 4 million during that time and essentially all of them were PAL region.

Because Europoors couldn't afford anything better, like pic related.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 18:32:27 2016 No.3345814 >>3345807 The quintessential Apple product--so pretty but so useless.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 18:36:58 2016 No.3345827 File: 286 KB, 1300x574, 326298rev6_big.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] This early C64 board from '82 has the gold-topped 4164 DRAMs on it which are notably less reliable than the later plastic cased ones.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 18:39:24 2016 No.3345830 >>3345814 >but so useless. Tell that to my definitive version of Another World.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 18:47:23 2016 No.3345840 >>3345807 >>3345830 BTW, I just wanted to let you all know I've seen this troll before who faps to Apple IIgses because he played Reader Rabbit on them once in the school computer lab in the 1st grade.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 19:32:52 2016 No.3345904 >>3345245 Anybody actually know the source on this image?

Anonymous Fri Jul 8 21:08:31 2016 No.3346038

>>3345640
I have. You're just clueless. Too clueless to even check ebay prices lately. It would have taken you less than a minute. Why do you kids do this? Are you really that fucking lazy or are you so convinced that everything conceived in that little millennial brain of yours is fact?

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 21:16:22 2016 No.3346047 >>3345464 Probably gave all the money to the Israel army to pursue the Zion agenda.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 8 21:36:53 2016 No.3346075 >>3344807 The RAM is actually 41264s which are 64kx4, not the 256kx1 41256s. Also the switch was made in the last breadbins, not the C64C.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 01:36:21 2016 No.3346458 >>3345638 >>3346038 i literally can't get one for under 75$ here so fuck off

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 04:02:18 2016 No.3346573 File: 115 KB, 465x656, tumblr_nuzkyomCEB1tnpj5no1_500.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>3345696 In fact Amigas were very popular in Poland, regardless of that.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 05:20:28 2016 No.3346637 >>3346458 And that has what to do with the prices on ebay? Or what someone who isn't retarded can get one for?

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 06:36:01 2016 No.3346690

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-Commodore-64-keyboard-computer-UNTESTED/322181143038?_trksid=p2047675.c100009.m1982&_trkparms=aid%3D777000%26algo%3DABA.MBE%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D20131227121020%26meid%3D3603ba0476034f619f354c33cb9f56dd%26pid%3D100009%26rk%3D1%26rkt%3D1%26sd%3D401146683654

This one's cheap and also it's an NTSC C64C.

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 06:43:28 2016 No.3346697
File: 208 KB, 847x1105, tumblr_nor592hlhV1sodwato1_1280.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

>>3345470

They had their chance to grasp pro market, but they failed nevertheless... They deliberately made deal with Sun Microsystems for cheap Solaris workstations impossible.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 06:48:14 2016 No.3346701 >>3346697 There was an earlier plan in the mid-80s for a Unix workstation but only prototypes were built.

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 06:51:28 2016 No.3346705

As explained earlier, there was a big cultural difference between the US and Europe in that Europeans were willing to take chances on a new, unproven computer if they liked its capabilities, but for Americans brand loyalty was most important, in this case IBM loyalty.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 06:52:10 2016 No.3346707 >>3346697 is netbsd a good alternative to amiga unix these days?

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 06:53:47 2016 No.3346710 >>3346705 >Europeans didn't have massive Commodore brand loyalty

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 06:59:30 2016 No.3346715

Commodore completely shot themselves in the foot at every turn:

>PET line
>marketed to the business world
>limited to 32k of memory and lacked industry-standard RS-232 and Centronics ports
>had no real plans for a next generation computer after the C64
>sold everything at department and toy stores which cased people to not take them as a serious company
>B-series was a complete failure
>Amiga was too niche of a product and Commodore didn't have any decent marketing for it
>Plus/4 line was completely useless and had no real reason to exist
>CDTV fiasco
>the end finally came due to a massive lawsuit from several companies

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 07:01:25 2016 No.3346717 >>3346715 the PET was real popular in Europe though

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 07:02:21 2016 No.3346718 >>3346717 probably not in the UK though seems like the BBC Micro would've filled its niche

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 07:06:12 2016 No.3346721
File: 285 KB, 713x1070, another_world_01.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

>>3344034
Well it depends on the game. There existed of course halfass arcade and Atari ST ports, but there were also improved versions (Dungeon Master, Turrican, PIrates!) and some cool stuff that originated on Amiga (Lemmings, Pinball Dreams, Worms). Cinemaware especially did an outstanding job on the Amiga, making very good use of its capabilities.
But really the Amiga was a mid/late 80's system, just like Atari ST. It only managed to stay relevant in the early 90's because it was that much more advanced compared to IBM PC clones. I bought my Amiga 500 in 1991 and it was still very good next to 80386 machines. For one thing, it was much cheaper (unless you upgraded it with accelerator and HDD, but most games didn't need that). For another, 2D stuff that was properly programmed ran very nicely. Look at titles like Hybris, Alien Breed, Lionheart for example.
Besides that, well you get a full multitasking OS with GUI that runs fine on 1 MB machine (or even 512 KB, if you don't run too much stuff at once). You get a M68000 processor with always linear memory access (better for programming than the x86/DOS crap). The graphics were bitplane-based, but so was EGA, which is really the contemporary in late 80's. You get nice graphics and audio software, like Deluxe Paint. You also get an autoconfig hardware bus that doesn't suck like Win95 plug & pray.
In short, it was really advanced for its time, but Commodore didn't keep up in the 90's and after their death nothing went any further (just a series of companies buying the IP and doing jack all with it).
Pic was developed on Amiga computer and released in 1991. That was probably the apex of Amiga civilization, but sadly only a few nice years remained before the end of that empire.
For me it was the best days of computers. Since then I got faster machines with better graphics, but I'm not finding them as exciting. Especially now that everything became overcomplicated at hardware level, not fun to program.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 07:15:17 2016 No.3346726 >>3346721 >In short, it was really advanced for its time, but Commodore didn't keep up in the 90's They did though; the Amiga 3000 came out in 1990.

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 07:16:32 2016 No.3346730

>>3346721
>Especially now that everything became overcomplicated at hardware level, not fun to program

Wut. Today you just rely on OS API functions for all that. DirectX takes care of all graphics handling and you never need to perform the kludges required on 8/16-bit systems.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 07:18:52 2016 No.3346735 >>3346730 >kludges slipped onto the wrong board accidently?

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 07:19:11 2016 No.3346736 >>3346721 this >>3346726 But it was damn expensive. Also Amigas had their killer application in desktop video: >>3345524

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 07:19:42 2016 No.3346740 >>3346735 >can't even spell "accidentally"

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 07:21:34 2016 No.3346741 >>3346717 But again, Europeans were apparently less bugged about the nonstandard ports and lack of CP/M capability on the PET, which started dropping in popularity in the US after 1979 despite the rash of new models.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 07:23:45 2016 No.3346745 >>3346730 yes but is it fun to do that? i think being able to move a few numbers into a memory location on a c64 is pretty cool, windows doesn't let you do this

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 07:25:30 2016 No.3346749 >>3346745 People used to do that stuff less because it was fun than that there wasn't a better way.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 07:37:46 2016 No.3346770 >>3343931 atari st was the best

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 07:46:14 2016 No.3346776 I think Commodore's success in Europe was because they tried harder there and marketed better. Like the other guy said, Jack Tramiel always retained a soft spot for the land of his birth.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 07:55:30 2016 No.3346790 >>3345042 >That's about comparable to people thinking anything valuable was in the ET cartridge landfill. weren't there a lot of intact computers, consoles and/or non E.T 2600 carts in the landfill?

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 07:59:08 2016 No.3346791

>>3346726
Too expensive though. What they really needed was something like A1200 but with 3D chipset and linear framebuffer. That would have totally blown away all PC systems of the time, just like the OCS Amigas did in the 80's. The AGA stuff just didn't cut it.
A3000 (really a business-oriented workstation) was also released a couple years later than it was ready, for some strange reason. Also they failed to make useful partnership with Sun Microsystems, who were interested in their hardware. Commodore just made a whole lot of mistakes.

>>3346730
only API functions = boring
On top of that, you're dependent on OS that's constantly changing, that you have to keep upgrading libraries and compilers all the time. It's not at all the same as having a simpler machine with assembler, and that you can do whatever you want.
And I'm personally very fed up of the upgrade cycle. Machine and OS keep changing, but I'm not getting anything from it but more bloated web browsers and crappier programs. I could do all the word-processing and other stuff I needed just fine 20 years ago. I don't even like all the Web 2.0 stuff, not even youtube.
Anyway hardware and OS are just too complicated now. Terry Davis talks about it, and makes a case for going back to simpler interfaces in some scenarios (educational/fun computer), but I doubt anyone will care.
http://www.templeos.org/Wb/Doc/Charter.html
http://www.templeos.org/Wb/Doc/Demands.html

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 07:59:44 2016 No.3346793 >>3346790 No. All that was there was a bunch of unsold cartridge PCBs that they'd crushed with a steamroller prior to burying.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 08:01:09 2016 No.3346795 File: 12 KB, 259x194, index.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 08:06:19 2016 No.3346796

>>3346791
>I doubt anyone will care
Hardware manufacturers and commercial software developers prefer the current situation; customers should be consumers, not in charge of their machines.

templeos looks a bit "out there" though.

old style low level hacking and modern highly abstract stuff both have their pros and cons, and different use cases. They can and should coexist

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 08:06:46 2016 No.3346797

>>3346791
>Anyway hardware and OS are just too complicated now

If you'd actually lived back then and weren't born in 1998, you wouldn't have that romanticized view of that time. Setting up a PC back then was horrible torture compared to what it is now. I have this book "Secrets of Windows 3.1" laying around, and oh god, nobody would ever ever want to relive the early 90s.

Oh no, this PC hangs when running Windows because you have the Revision 1.03A BIOS instead of the Revision 1.03B BIOS. Oh no, this PC does some nonstandard memory mapping. You have to use X HIMEM.SYS setting to work around it. Oh no, you can't just plug a card or peripheral in and expect it to work. You have to move jumpers around, play with your configuration files, and reboot 25 times. Oh no, this PC needs a custom OEM Windows because it has a proprietary hard disk.

That shit only ended in the mid-90s when Microsoft forced everyone to standardize and quit using proprietary hardware.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 08:10:36 2016 No.3346798 >>3346705 You've touched on it, but in the US computers were either work machines (IBM) or hobby machines sold as toys (Apple, C64). If you wanted to bring your work home with you, you got an IBM.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 08:11:48 2016 No.3346802 can we place make accusations of young age a bannable offense? Shit's beyond annoying

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 08:13:51 2016 No.3346804 >>3346793 It was some kind of warehouse dump, they found bits of controllers and accessories and a few cases of boxed games.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 08:15:02 2016 No.3346807 >>3344025 that's because you're a fucking furry YIFF IN HELL

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 08:19:12 2016 No.3346810 >>3346804 Probably unsold inventory, in any case nothing usable after having been crushed, encased in cement, and left in the Arizona summer heat for 25 years.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 08:20:13 2016 No.3346814 >>3346791 >this born in le rong generation fedora kid

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 08:21:40 2016 No.3346817

>>3346797
DOS was pretty crappy compared to Amiga, for the reasons I mentioned. But my first computer was Amstrad CPC, and before that some limited use of CP/M text only system. So I wasn't afraid to get my hands dirty. DOS was annoying, but not something I couldn't handle. Ditto with hardware jumpers for ISA cards and disk drives. However I've never been a fan of Windows. In the DOS days, Win3.1 was just a curiosity for me, and all the games I cared for ran in DOS anyway. By the time Win95 came out, I was already on Slackware Linux.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 08:26:21 2016 No.3346819 >>3346817 my, aren't you a self absorbed shithead. Perfectly explains your post history on this thread though

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 08:29:25 2016 No.3346823 File: 62 KB, 1368x768, scr-20160709142433.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>3346819 Go back to your Windows botnet, desu senpai. It's all you're capable of.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 08:39:12 2016 No.3346828 >>3346814 Seems more to me like a nostalgic senile old guy, but idk.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 08:44:51 2016 No.3346835 >>3346810 >nothing usable A few carts were tested and found to be playable, but generally yeah, a quarter century in a landfill didn't do it any favors.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 08:45:15 2016 No.3346836 >>3346797 dos and c64's are not comparable

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 08:48:06 2016 No.3346841 File: 272 KB, 1173x802, tumblr_ns1nf79qFh1tnpj5no1_1280.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>3346796 You can program Amiga in C, but even then there is lots of low-level stuff going on.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 08:48:22 2016 No.3346842 >>3346836 Then again... >format disk on DOS Type FORMAT A: >format disk on C64 Type OPEN15,8,15:PRINT#15,"N:VOLUME LABEL":CLOSE15

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 08:50:34 2016 No.3346845 >>3346842 i was talking more about actually programming it but in any case, the C64 had DOS Wedge which were MUCH shorter commands than the OPEN one.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 08:52:42 2016 No.3346848 >>3346841 >You can program Amiga in C that's not a present day Amiga, is it? I mean, yes, you can program for old hardware in ways that old hardware was typically programmed for. That's not exactly a revelation.

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 08:54:08 2016 No.3346853

>>3346842
That's actually an exception for most 8-bit computers which weren't that bad.

Apple II: Type INIT program

TRS-80, Atari 800: These both had a menu-driven DOS

I do agree though that DOS is more user friendly than most 8-bit OSes but then it's 16-bit so it should be.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 08:55:10 2016 No.3346856 Amiga games were written in 68000 asm most of the time though; only applications that ran off Workbench tended to be written with C.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 08:55:55 2016 No.3346857 >>3346856 you can even write sega genesis games in C today yet it's not exactly the best idea, isn't it

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 08:56:01 2016 No.3346858 what happened to A and B anyway?

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 08:56:35 2016 No.3346860

>>3346842
And don't get me started on how you can't just overwrite existing files on a C64 disk, you have to first delete it.

What's that? You say there's a command called Save & Replace? Whoops, that's fatally bugged and will trash your disk if you use it.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 09:03:52 2016 No.3346869 There was a 1982 interview with InfoWorld in which Bill Gates talks about how much more powerful and easier to use the IBM PC is versus 8-bit machines.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 09:05:59 2016 No.3346876 >>3346848 Kickstart was programmed in Assembly and BCPL Workbench and its libraries was mainly in C. There were lots of C compilers for Amiga back in 1980's/1990's.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 09:07:29 2016 No.3346880 >>3346876 are you trying to be informative or what? I don't really get what you're trying to say, or why you're responding to me

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 09:08:55 2016 No.3346883 >>3346697 It would have been really cool if their UNIX workstations were actually worked on further.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 09:09:25 2016 No.3346885 >>3346876 Commercial Amiga games generally booted right off the floppy and were written in assembly (there always being exceptions to the rule of course), applications and utilities ran in Workbench and were written in C.

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 09:11:28 2016 No.3346892

>>3346798
Apple IIs were definitely seen as a "real" computer, in fact they had a strong presence in the small business market until 1986. When Appleworks came out in 84, it booted Lotus 123 off the list of top 10 best selling software packages.

Macs definitely not, by that time the business market was completely PC-dominated and so they targeted desktop publishers and multimedia devs.

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 09:17:45 2016 No.3346903
File: 318 KB, 1280x960, tumblr_nop557N1dH1sodwato1_1280.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

>>3346885

And that caused a lots of headache when you got hard disk and wanted to install them. Now we got WHDLoad for installing games from "NODOS" floppies.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 09:18:18 2016 No.3346904 File: 21 KB, 320x200, MS.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>3343931 Moonstone coop mode. And all the dungeon crawlers and crpgs that got ported.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 09:18:37 2016 No.3346905 File: 148 KB, 261x261, tarzanface.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>3346857 >sega genesis >genesis

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 09:18:38 2016 No.3346906 >>3346903 most amiga games are downright unplayable without WHDLoad thank god that it's free now

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 09:19:57 2016 No.3346907 >>3346905 ikr, it's the EXODUS XD

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 09:20:08 2016 No.3346908 >>3346906 Willy Beamish was pretty much unplayable without a hard drive. It came on 13 (!) diskettes, tons of disk-swapping and long loading times. It could be installed on a hard drive back in the days too though.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 09:20:43 2016 No.3346909 >>3346905 >NOT triggering europeans by calling it the genesis sm.h

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 09:24:11 2016 No.3346916

>>3346908
Not a problem PC owners ever had to worry about since we did have hard disks. In 1992, PCs had 256 color graphics and high density floppies while Amigafags were still toodling along on a 1985-vintage computer with 512k of memory and double density floppies.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 09:26:11 2016 No.3346919 >>3346793 ;_;

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 09:28:48 2016 No.3346926
File: 2.00 MB, 450x338, tumblr_nwmo6zMEWT1tdhimpo3_500.gif [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

>>3346916

That's right, since 1991 Amiga was in death spiral... 32-bit CPUs, AGA chipset and CD-ROMs didn't helped. I think its safe to say that golden years of that platform lasted from 1985 to 1991.

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 09:29:25 2016 No.3346929

>>3346909
It reminds me of American retro game reviewers who have to drone on and one about how "Famicom is the Japanese NES" and how "Super Mario Bros 2 was originally a game called Doki Doki Panic" like everyone just the least interested in retro gaming doesn't know that.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 09:30:11 2016 No.3346930 >>3346916 >256 color graphics 256 is still less than 4096.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 09:31:31 2016 No.3346934 >>3346835 I'm not suprised. 2600 carts could probably have survived After The end that every 80's kid thought might happened until the USSR just up and died. And Tetris took over the world ;_;

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 09:32:14 2016 No.3346936

>>3346929
when you're doing TV one of the first and most important rules is that you always assume you gained new audience, people are watching you for the first time. Same reason why game shows give a rough breakdown on their rules on every single episode, or why sport commentary keeps re-explaining the basic rules

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 09:33:17 2016 No.3346937 >>3346930 Except of course the Amiga can only display 32 of them on screen at once with 4096 being the maximum total palette, while VGA displays 256 out of 262,000 colors.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 09:34:52 2016 No.3346941 >>3346916 >>3346926 I blame it on Britbongs. There was a huge installed userbase of A500s in the UK and so software devs were obliged to support them and not the newer, more powerful models.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 09:38:05 2016 No.3346947 https://tcrf.net/Category:Amiga_games Amiga devs loved their hidden messages

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 09:38:19 2016 No.3346949 >>3346937 you know about HAM, so why try to be technically correct when it's ultimately meaningless? You gain nothing from technical correctness, and neither did platforms back then. install base and software mattered more

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 09:42:10 2016 No.3346954
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>>3346941

Commodore did the same blunder. They put core of A500 into CDTV.

It means: 7MHz CPU and 512kB of ram connected to 680MB drive. And usually publishers wasted the CD's by putting A500 games on them.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 09:43:24 2016 No.3346958 >>3346941 It's just like how they all had cassette tapes on their C64s years after everyone else had disks. Why do Britbongs always hold the rest of us back?

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 09:44:52 2016 No.3346960

>>3346954
Most of the games for the CD32 were poorly done ports of OCS and ECS-games. For some reason you usually had to choose between music and sound effects, and the controls were rarely remapped for the new controller, so you usually had to jump with up and all that bullshit that was a necessity when using Atari-standard joysticks.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 09:44:53 2016 No.3346961 >>3346947 For example, The New Zealand Story has a hidden feature that if you type MOTHERFUCKINGKIWIBASTARDS on the title screen, you get 22 lives.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 09:45:53 2016 No.3346962 >>3346961 Retro console gamers BTFO, can't do that on Nintendo!

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 09:48:12 2016 No.3346968 File: 137 KB, 1920x982, Amiga-CD32-wController-L.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>3346960 Are you sure you are not confusing CDTV with CD32? Anyway CD32 was too late and too little to help.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 09:49:42 2016 No.3346972 >>3346968 I was talking about the CD32, no misspelling. The CDTV was made for a niche that never emerged really.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 09:52:04 2016 No.3346976 Worldwide Amiga sales for its 9 year run were about 4 million units, with 1 million of them being A500s. The biggest market was the UK with just about 1.5 million Amigas sold there. North American sales were about 700-800,000.

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 09:57:36 2016 No.3346985

Here's the breakdown by country:

US/Canada=700,000
UK=1.5 million
Germany=1.3 million
France=250,000
Italy=600,000
Rest of Europe=150,000

Though it's popular to say Amigas were a Yuropoor thing and irrelevant here, we were still the third biggest market for them.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 10:00:24 2016 No.3346991 >>3346985 France was mostly Atari country I heard.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 10:00:52 2016 No.3346993 >>3346985 >we were still the third biggest market for them while having a considerably higher population, making the market penetration much lower

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 10:02:35 2016 No.3346994 Most all of the major US game devs in the late 80s supported the Amiga except Sierra because they never cared about anything but IBM and Apple.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 10:03:57 2016 No.3346995 File: 349 KB, 1280x757, tumblr_nn5om17Qc01sodwato5_1280.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>3346697 Commodore tried hard to lure Pc users into Amigas by offering PC-compatible emulator as an expansion board.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 10:06:25 2016 No.3347001 >>3346995 There was pure software emulation too, in the form of the application "Transformer", but it wasn't really of any practical use, it was only made as a demonstration.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 10:06:33 2016 No.3347002 >>3346994 Well...kind of. Some like Microprose and Cinemaware were very big on the Amiga and did fantastic work with it, but a lot of Amiga games including almost all arcade titles were imported from Europe.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 10:14:01 2016 No.3347012 File: 135 KB, 740x402, tumblr_nptwjruvVg1sxm4gzo5_1280.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] "What Could be Great: A history of Amiga"

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 10:15:38 2016 No.3347015 >>3347001 PC-Task was more usable: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqRXX97qyIA

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 10:16:22 2016 No.3347017 >>3347012 Arne Niklas Jansson is fucking amazing.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 10:35:38 2016 No.3347049 >>3346797 >and reboot 25 times For what its worth, my IBM 330 (a 486) boots in two seconds from powerup. No single modern computer can do that.

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 10:37:56 2016 No.3347051

>>3346835
>A few carts were tested and found to be playable, but generally yeah, a quarter century in a landfill didn't do it any favors.

They opened up the landfill a few years ago and found tons of working carts, even sold a few on ebay and donated them to museums and such.
They did not steamroll them, just dumped them in the landfill.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 10:39:41 2016 No.3347053 >>3346857 >you can even write sega genesis games in C today You could write them in the early 90s too. Comix Zone was written in C.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 10:40:50 2016 No.3347056 >>3347053 yeah, that's true, but now it's even easier with all the tools we have (emulators and cross-compilers) marble madness was also written in C originally

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 10:42:54 2016 No.3347060 >>3343931 Superior graphics and sound for its time.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 10:44:33 2016 No.3347062 >>3346954 I wish I bought a CDTV back when it sold for 15 pounds a piece. just look at the damn thing, it looks so fucking sexy for a CD player.

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 10:47:05 2016 No.3347068
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>>3347017

http://androidarts.com/Amiga/AmigaHDD.htm

>>3347060

Yea, but sound was the most weakest part of that system. 8-bits became obsolete in 1988, when soundblaster was introduced.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 10:58:18 2016 No.3347097 File: 306 KB, 704x566, tumblr_n4ip2tLykT1rrl4xho1_1280.gif [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>3347062 And nice boot animation.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 11:19:26 2016 No.3347128 >>3347068 The Famicube is really neat too. Well, everything he has done is really cool.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 11:38:48 2016 No.3347146 >>3347049 I didn't know a 486 PC is a Commodore 64. Because if you have DOS 6.22/WfW 3.11 on that thing as most 486s did, you'd take about 15 seconds to boot DOS and then another 20 or so to start Windows.

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 11:46:53 2016 No.3347154

>>3343931

EWS was using Amiga for his animations, by standards of the 1990 it was mindblowing... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ho9TbIbtIUY

But later he was consumed by insanity of extreme Amiga fanboyism, and like many furries he became pornographer: http://www.animationandvideo.com/2011/08/eric-w-schwartz-cartoonist-animator-and.html

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 11:48:15 2016 No.3347158

The nice thing about the C64 as far as I'm concerned is that it's literally plug-and-play. There's only one configuration and no need for OS disks or other junk like that. All you need to do to run 90% of its software is insert a disk and type LOAD"*",8,1.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 11:58:37 2016 No.3347171 >>3346791 >I don't even like all the Web 2.0 stuff, not even youtube Wut.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 12:01:32 2016 No.3347174 >>3346791 Me, I used to be a born in le wrong generationer like you, but I overcame it a long time ago when I realized the past always sucked and the world is gradually getting better and life easier all the time.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 12:03:38 2016 No.3347180 >>3346814 >>3347174 >you'll never be mad enough about nothing to samefag

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 12:04:57 2016 No.3347184 >>3346791 >I don't even like all the Web 2.0 stuff, not even youtube. Me neither, but Youtube is sorta fine though. I tend to download every longer video I wanna watch with youtube-dl.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 12:06:18 2016 No.3347189 >>3347184 When was the Internet good though?

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 12:07:06 2016 No.3347191

>>3347146
IBM did ship some machines with "Rapid Resume", essentially what modern Windows now calls "Hibernation".
It was hooked into the bios too so it skipped most of the POST process, even after power off. Worked with DOS and win3.1, but not so much with win95 because direct disk writing fucks your long file names so you had to dick around with a custom partition

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 12:09:57 2016 No.3347193 >>3347189 Back in the dial-up days, you could find Captain Planet in a few mouse clicks. :^)

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 12:16:20 2016 No.3347205

The Amiga was conceptually flawed from the get-go in that a system with a lot of custom ICs was not going to work well with a multitasking GUI OS. That kind of set was fine on the C64 and Atari 800 which still had primitive, single-tasking OSes but by the time you get to more advanced hardware, it doesn't work which is why the PCs and Macs never used that shit.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 12:18:39 2016 No.3347209 >>3347205 >a system with a lot of custom ICs was not going to work well with a multitasking GUI OS why?

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 12:23:57 2016 No.3347215 >>3347209 Have you noticed you don't see computers use them from the 90s onward?

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 12:26:42 2016 No.3347219 >>3347215 I'm asking why custom ICs and multitasking GUI OSes are in conflict. I do not ask why ICs have been replaced

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 12:27:38 2016 No.3347221

It's too hard to design a multitasking OS around custom ASICs. PC hardware has always been very rudimentary and the CPU has complete control of the system bus. This is not the case with machines like the Commodore 64. You have to dance to the tune of the ASICs in the computer so to speak (for example, the VIC-II controls both the system bus and RAM refresh).

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 12:30:33 2016 No.3347225 File: 324 KB, 1280x856, tumblr_nofvjikFPY1sodwato1_1280.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] Seriously, does anyone is using original hardware for retrogaming here?

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 12:35:40 2016 No.3347232 Amiga didn't have any worthwhile business software and the Mac OS had a better UI, although it certainly did have a lot of things going for it back at the time.

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 12:35:47 2016 No.3347234

>>3347219
>>3347205
The only conflict between custom video/hardware ASICs and multitasking GUI OS is that it is difficult to upgrade both in hardware and software. For a hardware upgrade you need something that is compatible with the previous hardware, and with software you need something that is compatible with the majority of hardware models.

PCs dodged that bullet because every new hardware was very similar; faster versions of the old ones with little upgrades in functionality (more colours, faster speed).

>Macs never used that shit

Someone here is too young to remember when Macs switched from 68k to PPC.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 12:36:50 2016 No.3347237 >>3347234 >Someone here is too young to remember when Macs switched from 68k to PPC. Macs still didn't have custom ASICs in the PPCs, also they did retain backwards compatibility with 680x0 software.

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 12:40:08 2016 No.3347241

Apple got lucky with the two mighty forces of Postscript and Pagemaker, also the Mac had 512x384 and later 640x480 resolution which gave you nice square pixels unlike the Amiga's elongated 640x200. Sounds unimpressive now but it was a big deal to graphics designers, plus the Mac's black-and-white display.

Also Apple had superb marketing and an almost messianic belief that mouse-driven GUIs were the path forward. Commodore didn't have that, in fact they had nothing even resembling "marketing" at all.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 12:42:15 2016 No.3347245 >>3347241 As one other point, Apple were a respected company that people took seriously. Commodore...were not.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 12:43:45 2016 No.3347247 The marketplace by the late 80s did not have enough room for a third computer architecture. Also, though better than pre-Windows 95 Microsoft OSes, the Amiga OS was still not up to the level of the Mac, especially in terms of the UI.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 12:55:27 2016 No.3347257 >>3347241 Amiga had square pixels mode, but at the price of flickering (interlace mode). AGA and ECS chipset could bypass that problem by connected to VGA monitor and turned on into 31KHz video modes.

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 12:56:59 2016 No.3347259

Amiga had some advantages over Macs like color, sound, and preemptive multitasking, but in many other areas it fell comically short.

The custom hardware was the real killer because almost all software bit-banged the hardware directly and so it would only work on the specific machine it was written for. It killed any upgrade path because the vast body of A500 software would not run on an A3000, ensuring that machine's ultimate failure. Apple didn't do this; they rigidly enforced use of the API routines in the OS and also provided devs with state-of-the-art programming tools, leading to industry-changing applications like PageMaker.

Apple had the Mac II out in 1987. This was a state-of-the-art machine well above anything else at the time and very expensive. It had 256 color graphics and could accommodate 128MB of RAM (!) at a time when most computers had 512k. There was no way Commodore could even touch that. Amiga had a lot of wacky graphics modes but the system architecture was too kludgy and cut too many corners for it to be a viable platform in the long run.

And because Apple enforced the use of the API instead of bit-banging the hardware, most Mac software would work right up until the x86 switch in the 2000s.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 12:57:32 2016 No.3347260 >>3347257 >flickering (interlace mode) Interlaced still images do not flicker

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 13:06:03 2016 No.3347276

My cousin bought a Mac IIcx in 89. His college roomies all had Amigas and were mostly just interested in playing video games. Well, he had that IIcx until upgrading to a Power Mac 7500 in 1996. He said it was a fantastic machine to work on and money well spent and that it was the best computer out in 89 that he could have gotten.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 13:06:38 2016 No.3347278 >>3347193 If you're talking about BBSs, that wasn't the internet. Modems weren't invented for internet access you know.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 13:08:42 2016 No.3347279 >>3347241 Applefags claim that, yet they didn't have a true multitasking GUI for many years. Multitasking was the way of the future, not the featureless Mac GUI.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 13:09:04 2016 No.3347280 >>3347260 Sorry to say, but it flickers in PAL/NTSC, I know what I say, because I was using Amiga back in 1997 for desktop video.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 13:09:43 2016 No.3347282 >>3347278 Yeh but he was referring to Web 1.0.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 13:10:57 2016 No.3347285 >>3347257 See the point made in >>3347259 Doing anything like that on an Amiga required l33t hax0r tricks and jumping through hoops.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 13:11:51 2016 No.3347289 >>3347278 Are you confusing the internet and the web? Because BBSes are pretty much a showcase component of the internet

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 13:13:16 2016 No.3347291
File: 78 KB, 1920x1080, this is a load of barnacles...jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

>>3347259
>And because Apple enforced the use of the API instead of bit-banging the hardware, most Mac software would work right up until the x86 switch in the 2000s.

This is not true at all. The Mac OS back then was completely designed around the 680x0 and Toolbox ROMs. That it worked on the PPC was entirely due to that chip having backwards compatibility with the 680x0. The only reason A/UX or MAE could run Mac OS, and Mac apps, on other platforms, is because they emulated 680x0 processors.

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 13:15:53 2016 No.3347296

Uh. Multitasking is NOT a GUI feature, it is an OS feature, though. An OS has more to it than just multitasking. I know from firsthand experience because I used to use Video Toaster that the Amiga OS was nowhere near as well designed or easy to use as the Mac OS>

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 13:18:11 2016 No.3347298 The reason MacOS was easier was because it was so god awfully simplistic and limited.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 13:25:28 2016 No.3347309 >>3347296 >Multitasking is NOT a GUI feature, it is an OS feature nobody suggested otherwise

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 13:28:36 2016 No.3347313

As I remember it, the Amiga OS was much, much shittier from a design standpoint than the Mac OSes of that time. It wasn't even as good as Windows 3.x which was also much worse than the Mac OS.

So it boils down to this:

PC: Compatible with 90% of all other hardware and software out there. Shitty design, primitive, and hard to set up and use, but has top-shelf business software like Lotus 123, WordPerfect, and dBase.

Mac: Incompatible with 90% of hardware and software, but much much easier to set up and use, plus it dominated desktop publishing and printing.

Amiga: Incompatible with 90% of hardware and software, shitty GUI, but it's bretty gud at video games.

So at the end of the day, a PC got you a vast glut of hardware and software, a Mac got you an easier, more user-friendly machine that was good at desktop publishing, but cost a bundle, and an Amiga had...well, it was still over $1000 for what amounted to a glorified game console and then you realized you could just buy a NES for $200 if you wanted that shit.

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 13:33:21 2016 No.3347318

Slick, graphics-intensive games didn’t complete their move away from coin-op and to the home computer until that same home computer was adequately satisfying the users’ desires for broad-based compatibility with most other computer users and for a decent, all-around GUI with many quality productivity apps running on it. That combination of capabilities was first fully realized by the Windows ’95 PC. The Mac is now seeing a new surge based on unprecedented levels of compatibility with the Windows world, and an unrivaled suite of free productivity software:

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 13:36:48 2016 No.3347324 >>3347289 Yeah, Telnet BBSs are accessed through the internet, but regular dial-up BBSs are just accessed through the phone network without an internet access.

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 13:37:13 2016 No.3347325

>>3347280

I don't know how's that related, but whatever...

Amiga 3000 had video signal adapter ("flicker-fixer") build-in, so you could connect VGA monitor without hassle.

BTW: even Amiga 1000 had digital CGA outputs: http://old.pinouts.ru/Video/AmigaVideo_pinout.shtml

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 13:37:47 2016 No.3347326

The ultimate failing of the Amiga is that it was still built on the same design philosophy as the Atari 800 which was that every computer dev could have their own proprietary stuff, sound and graphics were what sold a home computer, the OS was little more than a wrapper for the disk drives, and software was mostly going to be written in assembly language and bitbang the hardware directly.

The market changed dramatically during Reagan's second term and in all fairness, the Amiga designers should have gone with their original plan to build a 16-bit game console. Barring that, they could have become graphics card designers for PCs and beaten nVidia to the punch by years.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 13:38:30 2016 No.3347327 >>3347291 >That it worked on the PPC was entirely due to that chip having backwards compatibility with the 680x0. Really? AFAIK Apple used software emulator for 680x0 code.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 13:41:52 2016 No.3347330 >>3347326 >the OS was little more than a wrapper for the disk drives I think you should familiarise yourself with Amiga OS Kernel. It was a microkernel system, you could expand its functions via dynamic libraries.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 13:43:59 2016 No.3347331 The Mac wasn't aimed at competing with the Amiga or the Atari ST. That was the Apple IIGS's job. And the IIGS was indeed a 16-bit system. it used the 65816, a 16-bit CPU. Apple never tried pitching a Mac at that market until the LC in the early 90s.

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 13:46:07 2016 No.3347334

>>3347330
In theory, in practice most Amiga software including almost all games didn't even use Workbench, they booted off the floppy disk and were written in 68000 asm. Completely and totally unlike the modern approach where you're using OS APIs like DirectX for gaming tasks.

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 13:51:28 2016 No.3347342

>>3345807
>>3347331
Ah, the poor Apple IIgs. Probably 90% of the things went to the school market so if you want to play Oregon Trail, it's p. good but not for much else. Apple clearly didn't care about them either and even cut performance to not steal Mac sales.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 13:52:44 2016 No.3347343 Wasn't commodore slating the C128 as a direct competitor to the Atari ST?

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 13:53:26 2016 No.3347346 pc98, x68k and fmtowns destroyed amiga and apple

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 13:54:57 2016 No.3347348

>>3347343
No. Magazines did make an issue of comparing the 260ST/130ST and the C128 however. I can scan in a specific article from Personal Computer World if anyone is interested.

Also the Atari ST had an 8Mhz 68000 for its CPU. The IIgs has a 2Mhz 65816 and its GUI runs at a painfully slow clip compared to the Mac which had to only move one graphics plane with a 3x faster CPU.

The sound hardware in the IIGS was designed by Bob Yannes of MOS Technology fame (designer of the SID chip)

As for the games issue, Apple II/IIc/IIe games were trash, it would be like an ST running VCS games (of no real interest to the general public who bought an ST/IIGS to run ST/IIGS games)

IIGS is still better than a Mac, overpriced however as usual with all Apple computers from the first Apple 1 to the latest Macbooks. :^)

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 13:56:22 2016 No.3347352

>>3347348
Really? Wouldn't it be more like an ST running Atari 8-bit games? (which it can't do well)

And would you really call all Apple 8-bit games trash? Come on. Anyway, backward compatibility was (and is) a big deal. I agree no sane person would buy a //gs just to run //e games, but it was a nice feature and opened up a huge library of (non-trash) games.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 13:58:41 2016 No.3347354 >>3347348 I didn't know that Yannes co-founded Ensoniq. I guess he really outsidded himself with the IIGS.

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 14:01:09 2016 No.3347359

>>3347354
Yes actually the SID was much less of a chip than it could have been because Commodore ordered it into production when Yannes wasn't finished yet. As it is, the SID still has 50% or something unused space on the chip die that could have allowed 6 channel sound, better filter and ADSR controls, more phase accumulator inter-dependancy...basically a mini Korg MS10. The man was a genius and even the more limited SID we did get proves it.

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 14:02:11 2016 No.3347362

Aren't there trade-offs between the 68k and 650x (or enhanced architecture of the C02 and 816 in particular) that don't make comparisons based on clock speed alone completely valid?

I do wonder why they didn't opt for a faster variant of the 816 though, maybe it just wasn't available at the time or too expensive perhaps? (though the next year NEC was using a 8 MHz rated 65C02 variant in their PC Engine console) I guess that's the same kind of mystery as to why the SNES went with such a slowly clocked version as well. (though moreso there since that was 1990)

Anyway, even with a slow CPU, hardware acceleration (ie a blitter) would have largely addressed the speed issues (and also made it much better for games and compared to the Amiga overall). Perhaps they didn't want to invest that much into it, or it's possible Apple wanted to intentionally limit its capabilites relative to the Macintosh. (didn't they do that with some of their late 680x0 based MACs to make the PPC ones more attractive?) The latter wouldn't have been an issue of course, has the IIgs been the Macintosh so to speak.

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 14:05:31 2016 No.3347365

>>3347362
It's pretty well known that at Apple Steve Jobs evangelized the Mac team and urinated on the Apple II team (Wozniak's brainchild) so it became the unloved child of Apple. It was a parallel development with isolated engineering groups (stupid I know)

There really is no contest between the 65816 and the 68000 as per ST...they had to choose the 816 for the II/IIe 6502 compatibility modes (hence the 1mhz reduced clock speed mode built in). The 68008 is more of a direct comparison to the 65816 really and even @ 20mhz the 65816 is not 3x more powerful than a 68000 (this is the core of the C64 Super-CPU add-on).

I will stick my neck out and say the IIgs is somewhere in between the C128 and the 520STM in raw CPU speed and C128 and Amiga in terms of custom chips. The sound chip being the notable exception...there was an Ensoniq sound card for the IIe I believe though already before the IIgs.

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 14:10:35 2016 No.3347370

>>3347365
If memory recalls, the 68008 was a cut down version of the 68000 (namely limited mem. addressing)

The 65816 does not have this limitation and also 6502 compatibility was a major selling point. The 68000 for comparison didn't have 6800 or 6809 compatibility since hardly anything used those CPUs other than arcade boards and the TRS-80 CoCo.

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 14:21:42 2016 No.3347381

>>3347334
>>3347334
>In theory, in practice most Amiga software including almost all games didn't even use Workbench, they booted off the floppy disk and were written in 68000 asm.

A practice that was later frown upon by community.

But that was when Commodore bankrupted, and 3rd party accelerator boards were reducing original hardware just to mere a power supply

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 14:25:41 2016 No.3347386 >>3347381 >A practice that was later frown upon by community Too little too late.

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 14:32:00 2016 No.3347391

>>3347370
The 68000 is just a crippled 68000 with an 8-bit data bus. The Sinclair QL uses it; quite weird combination of 32-bit registers and 8-bit bus.

AFAIK the 68000 dropped 6800 compatibility mostly because they wanted a movable stack pointer and they wanted a new CPU without legacy baggage, hence why it became the dominant 16-bit microprocessor.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 14:33:16 2016 No.3347393 >>3347391 The 68008 is also limited to a 20-bit address bus, right? And it's not just 32/8-bit either since there's both 16 and 32-bit portions internally. (like the 16-bit ALU)

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 14:36:05 2016 No.3347396 >>3347393 Yeah it's a real mess of a chip. Perfect for Sinclair machines like the QL. :^)

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 14:37:41 2016 No.3347397

>>3347396
Probably still better than the 8086 though, albeit in a larger package and more pricey. Personally I think it would have just been better to have an uprated 8Mhz Z80 and and gone for a more straightforward successor to the Spectrum with backwards compatibility and expanded addressing capabilities. (might have avoided some of the delays the QL experienced as well and probably been cheaper at that)

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 14:40:03 2016 No.3347403 File: 247 KB, 1280x960, tumblr_nxuyafs6is1sodwato1_1280.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>3347386 Exactly. This is why I am only longing for golden years of Amiga, 1985-1991, and I don't want to think "what if" and "what could be great".

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 14:43:43 2016 No.3347405

>>3347365
It's pretty well known that Apple purposed crippled the IIgs to not steal Mac sales just as late 680x0 Macs were crippled to not steal PPC sales.

The IIgs seems like it makes no sense. If it was going to come out crippled, then it would have been better to add its color and sound hardware to an upgraded Mac. They should have either gone one or the other, IIgs route or Mac, in the latter case, I personally think the IIgs might have been better, of course Apple would go on to switch CPU architectures twice more, with PPC and x86. It didn't help either that the 65816 was not a huge leap up from the 6502, certainly not enough to justify its continued use, then again there was also the Z8000 which hardly got used in anything but a couple of Unix workstations while the 65xx family are still produced for the embedded market.

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 14:47:15 2016 No.3347408

>>3347334
>Completely and totally unlike the modern approach where you're using OS APIs like DirectX for gaming tasks

Uh huh. As I noted earlier, Apple strongly enforced this design approach and specifically told devs "DON'T use assembly language or bitbang the hardware because you'll break compatibility with other people's machines."

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 14:49:45 2016 No.3347409 >>3347405 I think if they'd had an 8Mhz IIgs then it could have been a formidable competitor to the Amiga.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 14:50:46 2016 No.3347413 >>3347408 doesn't make APIs any less boring

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 14:51:54 2016 No.3347414 >>3347408 Right. Because most Amiga software was written in the caveman late 70s-early 80s fashion, it meant that upgrading from the A500 was impossible since nobody could use the large body of A500 software on next-generation machines like the A3000.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 14:54:12 2016 No.3347419 >>3347409 The Mac had far more support from management and there were a lot of people who wanted to kill off the Apple II line. Just like how Radio Shack crippled the CoCo 3 and then even destroyed prototype hardware being developed for it.

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 14:57:01 2016 No.3347421

Supposedly the IIgs team got a memo from management saying they could not do anything that made the computer more powerful than the Mac, but those sneaky buggers still found ways to get around this restriction.

The IIgs had a lot of advantages over the early toaster Macs, one of the less obvious being its preemptive multitasking OS, a feature that, incredibly, the Mac OS would not have until George W. Bush was president.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 14:58:20 2016 No.3347424 would they have had 8Mhz 65816s out yet in 1986? I thought they didn't.

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 15:01:41 2016 No.3347429

>>3347424
Not even 4 Mhz models were available? I haven't seen timelines for the 65C02 or 65816, so I'm not sure on the context, that info would similarly explain why the IIC had only a 1 MHz 65C02 (though that makes less sense in general, since NMOS 6502s should have been available at up to 4 Mhz, so having the CMOS one so slow made little sense), same for the C+ using only a 4 MHz version in '88, when 8 Mhz ones should have been redily available. (and the PC engine had already been using for a year, then again, the SNES having a 3.58 MHz 65816 derivative makes even less sense given the 1990 release date compared to 7.16 Mhz PC Engine and 7.67 MHz Genesis)

If not the original models, it would certainly make more sense that preference for the Mac kept the IIgs from being upgraded to a faster CPU. (and the 65816 should have been cheaper in general compared to the 68k, and affordable to licence if Apple was interested -same for the 65C02 -which NEC and Nintendo both did)

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 15:05:06 2016 No.3347432

>>3347419
>Just like how Radio Shack crippled the CoCo 3 and then even destroyed prototype hardware being developed for it

What bothers me about the CoCo is: 1. why the switch from the Z80? 2. why not make it compatible with the monochrome modes of the Model I/III/IV, have it parallel those models, but with the simpler form factor, VHF RF output (all the b/w modes should have worked fine on a standard television tube, except that some graphics might go into overscan if not optimized for that -anything using 224 lines or less should be OK on many sets, though some might be closer to 192-200 lines visible, and of course compensate for horizontal overscan as well), and added color capabilities of course. (plus a decent PSG rather than the bare DAC would have been nice, like the SN76489 (available as a tiny 16-pin DIP), or the YM2149/AY-3-8910.(more useful if the added I/O ports are used).

Hell, for the color video, they might have been better off going with the TM9918 VDP family, as far as off-the-shelf components were concerned. (certainly wouldn't have taken up more board space -same 40-pin DIP as the VDG, maybe more expensive than the Motorola VDG -certainly would have been better for most games though, more colors, sprites, etc) I mean, it wouldn't have been a 8-bit Atari or C64, but more in line with the Intellivision or Colecovision (same VDP and possibly PSG), or MSX for that matter.

Of course, they'd already set-up a somewhat different standard with the high-end Model II, but that could have been continued as a separate business machine, the CoCo and TRS-80 Model I/III/IV family kind of clashed as the mid-range/entrance level home computers.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 15:07:15 2016 No.3347439 >>3347432 The CoCo was originally a joint venture between Radio Shack and Motorola to create a terminal system, but putting that aside the 6809 is a better chip than the Z80 anyway.

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 15:09:47 2016 No.3347447

>>3347439
I still think breaking the established architecture of the TRS-80 model I (III/IV etc) was a bad move, they had an established user base, which meant established software market. An incompatible machine just splits their market. (the Model II also split the market to some extent, but was at least much closer in architecture and aimed at the higher-end/business market, rather than the home computer/hobby market which the Model I/III/IV and CoCo both fit into)

Even if they stuck with the Motorola VDG (which was fairly limited, with no sprites or hardware aid and color palette available), and again, I think the TI PSG might have been a good option for sound. (simple, but decent, and a very small chip; the AY/YM2149 being better if used for I/O functionality)

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 15:11:40 2016 No.3347456 Well, since the CoCo outsold the Model I & III it couldn't have been too bad of a decision. It even got a lot of followers the Model I didn't have because of the 6809.

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 15:13:55 2016 No.3347459

>>3347456
It was also a cheaper machine though, but in any case, maybe it would have been better if Tandy had used a 6800 for the original TRS-80 in that respect, but no much you can do about that by 1980. I don't know why they chose the Z80, if it was a cost issue, the 6502 would have been a good option compared to the 6800 (and used a lot less silicon than the Z80). Then again, CP/M wouldn't have come into the picture for those machines without a Z80.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 15:15:13 2016 No.3347463 >>3347403 The Deluxe Paint King Tut image is used in the Genesis version of Action 52, with the signature still intact.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 15:15:33 2016 No.3347464 Whoops, nvm. I just remembered that the Z80 had built in DRAM refresh capability.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 15:17:22 2016 No.3347468 >>3347463 >with the signature still intact would you prefer they deny credit?

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 15:19:00 2016 No.3347474 >>3347468 No, but them using an example image from an art program makes the game feel even more sleazy.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 15:20:33 2016 No.3347476 >>3347474 developers must spend extra resources and replicate something, although the asset they consider fitting already exists?

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 15:20:55 2016 No.3347479

>>3347459
The only computers I can name that used a 6800 were the Altair 680 and SWTPC 6800.

The 6800 has much faster instruction execution speed than the Z80 which takes forever to execute most instructions, but not all 6800 instructions are well-optimized, giving the 6502 an edge. It was expensive in the late 70s and required a separate DRAM refresh circuit. It doesn't have the 6502's register limitations, but it also has fewer addressing modes. including stack relative addressing. That means you have to copy the stack pointer to the index register to access parameters passed on the hardware stack in languages like C. That's better than what you have to do with the 6502, but C was only a few years old and not on most people's radar yet (Small C first appeared in Dr. Dob's in 1980).

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 15:23:09 2016 No.3347485

>>3347479
Yeah I know the Z80 has slower execution speed than the 6502 or 6800, the former would have still been the cheaper option even with needing an external RAM refresh circuit. Regardless, I think they should have stuck with the Z80 once they'd gone with it, the early models were rated for 2.5 Mhz, late they could upgrade to 4 Mhz. (and 6, or even 8 MHz) Plus there's CP/M later on.

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 15:24:22 2016 No.3347489

One thing the Z80 can do is run a pre-emptive multitasking OS very well if you look at SymbOS for the MSX2 and CPC range of machines. I don't believe the 68xx had moveable stack pointers as the 6502, but the Z80 did and this is a requirement. The only other 8bit that may have a conversion of SymbOS is possibly the C128 in CP/M mode, as it is possible to have 256 and 512kb RAM expansions on these quite easily compared to the 8bit CPC from Amstrad.

Not that Apple were clued up to multi-tasking though, but the possibility would be there to run SymbOS on the IIgs today if they had gone for something like an 8mhz Z80.

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 15:26:21 2016 No.3347493

>>3347489
The 65816 facilitated a pre-emptive multitasking OS, that point was mader earlier in this very thread in regards to the GS's OS.

That last tangent with the Tandy stuff was also in the context of the 6809, so a different context from that standpoint as well. (still CP/M for Z80 though)

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 15:29:51 2016 No.3347498

As for the 68XX series... even the 6800 had a 16 bit stack pointer that could be pointed anywhere in RAM.
The 6809 has a hardware and a user stack pointer, both 16 bits.
If you don't need a second stack pointer the user stack pointer can be used as an additional index register.
OS-9 had preemptive multitasking in 1979 and it even ran on the CoCo.

The 6502 had an 8 bit stack pointer that was fixed to one memory page but there have been small multi-tasking kernels for it for a long time.
It's tough to do a lot in a small stack space but it's possible. Something like OS-9 or SymbOS would be difficult on it.
The 65816 has a 16 bit stack pointer that can point anywhere in the first 64k and preemptive multitasking isn't that difficult.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 15:30:16 2016 No.3347502 >/vr/ - Retro Games >Games

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 15:30:38 2016 No.3347504

>>3346853
The DOS commands are largely inspired by CP/M anyway (originally for 8080 and Z80 based 8-bit micros). In fact in the beginning DOS didn't even have subdirectories in its filesytem (just as CP/M).
And unlike the 6502 which had linear memory access, with the 8086 you were stuck with 64k memory segmentation. Yes, it was more powerful than older chips like 6502, but terribly unfriendly next to the M68000 that was used on Mac, Atari ST, Amiga, Sun workstations... The x86/DOS system was a dirty hack that only survived because of IBM's clout in the business world (acquired by decades of ruthlessness and dirty tricks, mind you).

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 15:32:00 2016 No.3347508

>>3347498
I stand corrected.

Anyway, it's quite well known that Steve Jobs didn't like the Apple II line and wanted it crippled/killed off. A faster IIgs would have buried the Mac.

To be perfectly honest, I know little about the IIgs or how it rates against the Atari ST as we never got to see it in Europe. Americans no doubt have a better perspective.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 15:33:43 2016 No.3347513 >>3347504 I don't think it was a hack, but the x86 was the only 16-bit microprocessor available in production quantities in 1981 so IBM didn't exactly have a choice in the matter.

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 15:37:03 2016 No.3347515

>>3347504
But still much more user friendly, for example COPY filename instead of PIP filename.

The worst bit of CP/M legacy was probably the 8.3 filenames, a kludge that afflicted PCs until Windows 95 when even most 8-bit DOSes let you use longer filenames and spaces (for example, the C64 allowed 16 characters+spaces).

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 15:38:45 2016 No.3347523 Or the fact that DOS never even had a prompt asking if you wanted to delete a file (unless you type DEL .) when most 8-bit OSes did perform this little bit of common courtesy.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 15:40:50 2016 No.3347525 >>3347508 Oddly enough, the 6502 actually was designed as 6800 knock-off. The 6502 is actually the 2nd chip in the line, they had to change the pinout to avoid some legal issues, as it was originally pin compatible and MOS Technologies got sued.

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 15:41:52 2016 No.3347527

>>3347508
>To be perfectly honest, I know little about the IIgs or how it rates against the Atari ST as we never got to see it in Europe. Americans no doubt have a better perspective

If you want to...
have more onscreen colors without CPU intervention... IIgs.
run old Apple II software... IIgs.
develop for the Mac... IIgs.
do desktop publishing... ST.
have more computing power... ST.
port MS-DOS software... ST.
write music... take your pick based on how you want to do it. The IIgs has better built in sound, the ST has built in MIDI ports.
build customized software for storing information, produce presentations... IIgs. Hypercard
run games... take your pick. It depends on what games you want to run.
etc...
You get the idea.

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 15:43:37 2016 No.3347529

>>3347515
>a kludge that afflicted PCs until Windows 95
8.3 filenames are still in full effect. NTFS provides a translation layer, associating 8.3 files with long filenames, but that's just sugar coating.

>>3347523
>when most 8-bit OSes did perform this little bit of common courtesy.
unix rm will delete without confirmation. It's less about courtesy and more about not second-guessing the user

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 15:51:20 2016 No.3347540

>>3347527
All I'm saying is that the monochrome Macs are a ZX Spectrum on steroids - single screen mode, totally made of TTL with no custom ASICs, and a fast CPU to move the graphics around. The IIgs was the unfortunate red haired stepchild of Apple while the Mac was primitive rubbish compared to the ST/Amiga.

The OS and 68000 were the only redeeming features of the first generation Macs and the OS was stolen from Xerox and the 68000 was made by Motorola...at least the IIgs had some cool features and advanced hardware. It's less the speed than the total lack of anything. The first gen Macs are barely above a 70s technology level. To charge 2500 USD for a computer with 128k of memory, single sided floppies, and which had no colour graphics or advanced hardware is utter bollocks.

And I seriously question the sanity of anyone who paid that 2500 USD in 1985 for a computer that was much less than the far cheaper Amiga/ST. The ST's one downside is that Atari weren't taken by the business world seriously but it was a well established brand name for the home/consumer market at the time.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 15:53:24 2016 No.3347542 >>3343931 Fifi la Fume is way hotter than that harlot.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 15:56:25 2016 No.3347551 File: 14 KB, 480x360, skunkSandwich.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>3347542

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 15:56:51 2016 No.3347552 File: 22 KB, 300x300, 420.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>3345245 >filename

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 15:58:24 2016 No.3347556 >>3347529 >Using NTFS Windrone detected.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 15:59:46 2016 No.3347559 >>3347556 your detector is broken

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 16:00:23 2016 No.3347561

>>3347540
>All I'm saying is that the monochrome Macs are a ZX Spectrum on steroids - single screen mode, totally made of TTL with no custom ASICs, and a fast CPU to move the graphics around. The IIgs was the unfortunate red haired stepchild of Apple while the Mac was primitive rubbish compared to the ST/Amiga.
This is unfair. When the Mac 128 came out, the standard for business software was hi-res monochrome. Apple had been trying for that market since the failed Apple III. Color displays were hella expensive back then and even into the late 80s, monochrome monitors were widely preferred by a lot of people.

Considering also that the Mac line outside the Amiga/ST threefold.

>at least the IIgs had some cool features and advanced hardware

Actually most of the complexity in the IIgs relates to preserving compatibility with the 8-bit Apple II line. If they didn't have that, the IIgs would be a much, much simpler computer. It only has frame buffer graphics and generating color is no great technical challenge. The Ensonique sound hardware is the one truly unique part of the IIgs.

>The ST's one downside is that Atari weren't taken by the business world seriously but it was a well established brand name for the home/consumer market at the time

Well, the ST could have been a credible business computer but the corporate world couldn't take Atari seriously, also the all-in-one design made it seem not like a serious computer, but a toy.

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 16:00:49 2016 No.3347562
File: 31 KB, 500x375, mm3-amiga.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

>>3346903
Depends on the game. Some RPG and strategy/simulation stuff had HD installer. You can find out if such is the case on HOL site. For example, Pool of Radiance:
http://hol.abime.net/1099
Typical action/arcade games, like those by Psygnosis usually didn't have HD installer though. But towards the end of Amiga days, even that became necessary, due to the number of disks a game was released on (Hired Guns for example would have been unplayable without HD, or unless you had like 3 external floppy drives).
I ended up getting my own HD for my A500 just to play Might & Magic III (pic) because the disk-swapping had become unbearable.
But a lot of smaller games fitted on one or two floppies and were manageable with even just the internal floppy drive. Faery Tale Adventure is a good example. It used only one disk, despite covering a huge (at the time) expanse of land, and they even coded it so the game preloads the next map section when you get towards the edge of the current one (so that there's no loading delay).

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 16:05:42 2016 No.3347570

>>3347561
My cousin worked for a computer retailer back then and he said they sold a lot of Amigas to a local university, but they were still dwarfed by the Mac population there. Most Amigas were used for video design or instruction classes.

A few Amigas were the 3000UX which was a much cheaper alternative to SGI or Sun workstations. Also he said quite a few Amigas were sold to local businesses but no idea if they had Atari STs.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 16:08:12 2016 No.3347578 >>3347570 wow, that's odd because here in Germany the Atari ST was the computer you saw being used in banks, doctor's offices, etc, not Amigas.

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 16:10:31 2016 No.3347581

>>3347562
>Depends on the game. Some RPG and strategy/simulation stuff had HD installer.

Microprose games were usually easily installable (with exception of the F-19 and F-15 II). Dune II, History Line 1914-1918, Global Effect, Team Yankee trilogy etc. were very easily installable on HD, sometimes just run installer, or copied files by hand and make "assign" (something like Windows path, but every folder could be like physical device).

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 16:13:06 2016 No.3347586

>>3347578
Here in America, no business other than a video studio would touch an Amiga. My cousin's company sold quite a few STs as low cost productivity computers but nowhere near as many as IBM clones. People were really freaking dumb back then. If you were buying an office computer, Commodore and Atari carried a huge stigma for peddling toys and not "real" computers.

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 16:15:24 2016 No.3347594

>>3347581
Later Microprose games from the 90s are hard disk installable but anything they put out for the Amiga in the 80s used incredibly brutal copy protections that were known to damage disk drives.

Note however that the shift to hard disk installable games coincided with Microprose's decision to hand off all Amiga development to their UK subsidiary.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 16:16:49 2016 No.3347596 >>3347594 >incredibly brutal copy protections that were known to damage disk drives DRM, not even once

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 16:21:15 2016 No.3347608

>>3347561
Besides which, the Apple II had been a popular business computer in its time and it did have sound, color graphics, and a joystick port.

The TRS-80 and other home computers of the time had monochrome graphics and no sound.

Meanwhile, IBM had always offered sound, color graphics, and joystick ports on the PC from the beginning and later would expand on it with the 16 color EGA cards.

>Actually most of the complexity in the IIgs relates to preserving compatibility with the 8-bit Apple II line. If they didn't have that, the IIgs would be a much, much simpler computer. It only has frame buffer graphics and generating color is no great technical challenge. The Ensonique sound hardware is the one truly unique part of the IIgs.

The thing is, having 8-bit Apple compatibility was almost a necessity if they wanted to sell any IIgses at all.

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 16:26:31 2016 No.3347620
File: 61 KB, 1363x628, Usenet.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

>>3347596
Yeah, Microprose went hellofamonkey with copy protection in the late 80s. They had both disk and doc checks in games and their Apple II/C64/Amiga games used really nasty protection schemes that often fucked up floppy drives and caused the game disk to croak after a couple of uses.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 16:27:36 2016 No.3347626 File: 66 KB, 1369x734, Usenet2.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 16:28:17 2016 No.3347628

>>3347620
I remember these stories from a previous thread. Never had the hardware for it. Still, quite upsetting to see a company investing their resources into creating something that causes extra trouble for their customers, the very people they get their funding from. It's insane

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 16:30:28 2016 No.3347634 In the late 80s, DeluxePaint was the go-to tool for graphics design at game developers. You couldn't get a job at Sierra, Microprose, EA, etc without knowing DeluxePaint.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 16:32:08 2016 No.3347637 >>3347628 Supposedly Microprose got paranoid because of extensive piracy of their initial titles in 1984-85 (most of which were combat flight sims) and grossly overreacted to it.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 16:34:31 2016 No.3347642 >>3347637 fighting piracy is such a futile act. You offer better products, and that's it. Breaking your products because you're afraid of people using it is beyond paranoid and straight up mental

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 16:34:44 2016 No.3347643

>>3346949
Anyway the AGA chipset provided also 256 colors, but from a 24-bit palette instead of the 18-bit palette that VGA used. Also the HAM-8 was improved to allow 262,144 colors (18-bit) on the screen.
Mind you, I'm not defending the AGA chipset here. It was still underwhelming compared to what had been planned by the engineers. And it was too little, too late to make a difference. You don't go up against the established IBM machine (and their clones) without a massive advantage, just being equal or even a bit better in some areas isn't enough. That's why ALL home computers are long since dead now, and everyone uses crappy x86-derived architecture that still carries backwards compatibility kludges from decades ago, one of which was responsible for this recent CPU exploit:
https://www.blackhat.com/us-15/briefings.html

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 16:39:05 2016 No.3347649

>>3347643
>everyone uses crappy x86-derived architecture that still carries backwards compatibility kludges from decades ago
The alternative is currently practiced by ARM, where each generation is not necessarily backwards compatible.
That said, it's my understanding that internally x86 CPUs are very different, almost RISC-like nowadays and the compatibility is largely in form of microcode. While still annoying, it's not that damaging

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 16:39:48 2016 No.3347650

>>3347561
The ZX Spectrum comparison is a good one because the first-gen Macs rely entirely on the CPU to run everything. The motherboard is literally just a 68000 with a couple of supporting chips, RAM, and a bunch of TTLs to tie the whole thing together. Just like the Spectrum where the whole thing is made from TTLs and the CPU has to drive everything in the computer by its lonesome self.

I'm not surprised that the monochrome Macs were profitable; Apple were charging over 2000 USD for a computer that had to cost only half that much in parts and was certainly cheaper to build than the ST or Amiga, and for all that, the latter two machines still sold at half the price and gave you more computer. And yes, in Europe the Amiga/ST vastly outsold the Mac because of Apple's obscenely inflated prices.

Ease of use is nothing more than comparing GEM Write (or whatever) to MS Write or Wordperfect NON WYSIWYG DOS word processors. Clearly anything is easier to use with on screen representation of output rather than using your imagination as in WordPerfect 5.1 industry standard. A skilled secretary would be far more productive on WP5.1 however as the flip side to the coin.

Also colour WAS available, maybe you are thinking of terminals but even CGA PCs were 4 colour machines, clearly there is an advantage in user interface design in having more than 1 bitplane for your display screen, Apple chose it simply because the Xerox system also used a mono screen (it was a 60s designed system though, at which time colour truly was unavailable!) so as far as I'm concerned there is no reason and no advantage to a 'black and white forever' £2500+ ($4500 at 1980s exchange rates!) machine in 1984/85 sorry. For that kind of money I expect colour, dammit.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 16:41:55 2016 No.3347653 It's quite a shame with Microprose because they were one of the best Amiga devs and did some fantastic stuff with them.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 16:43:19 2016 No.3347656 FWIW, the Mac OS was NOT stolen from Xerox. It has some basis on it at the concept level but it was developed from scratch.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 16:44:34 2016 No.3347661 >>3347656 and that scratch was stolen from Xerox

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 16:46:18 2016 No.3347665
File: 5 KB, 320x256, police_quest_iii_11.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

>>3346985
Also, Amiga lived on in eastern europe for some time throughout the late 90's. Even after Commodore went belly-up, some software houses over there were releasing new games for it, long after the western devs had bailed out.

>>3346991
Both Atari ST and Amiga were very popular here.

>>3346994
Well Sierra did support the Amiga in the 80's, but they dropped the ball later on by releasing halfass ports of SQ4, KQ5, LSL5, PQ3, with ugly colors that are most likely the result of running the VGA stuff through some kind of filter program. Look at pic and compare to Monkey Island 2 (also a VGA game), for example. It's like night and day.
They also never released Quest for Glory 3 and 4, but maybe those came out after Commodore filed for bankruptcy.

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 16:47:54 2016 No.3347668

>>3347656
This is a load of barnacles.jpg

I'm sorry but Steve Jobs was NOT thinking 'gee I want to make an object oriented graphical user interface with windows icons mouse and pull down menus....I know I'll just check out Xerox's development for a laugh to pass the time'

Everyone knows Xerox staff were angry as hell being told to show this to Apple and it is almost identical save for subtle graphical style changes, the entire basis of Win95/Workbench/GEM/OS2/MacOS is fundamentally identical to to the Xerox system designed.

BTW, the reason the Mac didn't use color is just because Apple couldn't figure out a way to make a color GUI that didn't look tacky.

Also the IIgs is still a remarkably complex architecture even putting 8-bit Apple II compatibility aside. The Ensonique sound chip is one of the most complex on chip integrations of any machine even PCs today, and the color palette change controls are similar to copperlist/DLi so not trivial. I admit I haven't found a reliable technical description of exactly what the IIgs video subsystem does do, but on the basis of games seen it is too much for a 65816 to be doing it all in software given the games I have seen (this is comparing it to the ST games with a superior CPU)

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 16:50:15 2016 No.3347669 >>3347665 Hence the comment about Sierra not caring about anything but PCs and Apples. They never really cared about the Atari 800/C64 in earlier times and likely viewed all those machines as cheap toys and not a real computer.

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 16:52:17 2016 No.3347670

>>3347540
>All I'm saying is that the monochrome Macs are a ZX Spectrum on steroids - single screen mode, totally made of TTL with no custom ASICs, and a fast CPU to move the graphics around
And speed IS important. When you are cutting and pasting scalable fonts, recalculating large spreadsheets and the like, speed matters.
I realize some people just wanted to play games and all systems are judged on their ability to do so, but not everyone thought that way.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 16:53:58 2016 No.3347674 >>3347670 games are some of the most performance demanding applications available

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 16:55:31 2016 No.3347679

>>3347670
Rubbish. The ST is clocked at the same speed as the Mac 128/512/Plus/SE which is 8Mhz, so everything the Mac does the ST also does at a quarter of the price and faster too over the DMA interface as far as I/O goes (ditto the 720k disk drive with fixed rotational speeds) and you could offload the workload of screen movement to the blitter PRE STE via a Mega4/2 so once again the ST is the superior machine at 1/3 to 1/2 the cost of a Mac....this also carries on right up to the Mega ST + SLM804 vs Mac + Laserwriter combo.

Funny thing is games need MORE cpu/bandwidth than any application generally, this has always been the case, and for a machine that has to do it all in software like the ST it means all the pixel pushing power can be easily transferred to bubble sorting your linked lists or DB files blah blah.

And even without a blitter a software blitter works just fine to speed up the A-Line graphics routines in GEM so win/win for every model made from 85 ST to Mega4/Mega2 later with hardware blitter incorporated on the motherboard.

People who bought a Mac in 85 for 2500 quid were the same losers who bought Bang & Olufsen TVs for 3000 quid and yet it is technically identical to a Phillips TV for half to 1/3 the price, getting romantic about the original Mac is fine but I am dealing with tangible technical comparisons and reality, save the rest for Apple forums thanks.

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 16:57:02 2016 No.3347682

>>3347643
>everyone uses crappy x86-derived architecture that still carries backwards compatibility kludges from decades ago
I hope POWER will become more popular soon, it has gained some hold in servers at least, and there's a company called Raptor Engineering that is developing a workstation with it. I hope it's not just vaporware.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 16:58:08 2016 No.3347686 And yet Atari and Commodore are long gone and Apple is still here, so who wins at the end of the day?

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 16:59:07 2016 No.3347689 >>3347686 >who wins it's not a competition

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 17:04:26 2016 No.3347696

>>3347686
Apple is still here because of the iPhone and iPad, that is the only reason. Also remember that Apple always charged such obscene prices that even when they had hard times and sales fell off (eg. in the mid-90s), they were never in all that serious danger of going out of business.

Consider that Steve Wozniak used all these brilliant, clever, cost-saving hacks to get color graphics and a disk drive on the Apple II, but that somehow didn't translate into price because the Apple II cost at least 2.5x as much as its nearest competitors like the TRS-80 and Commodore PET.

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 17:10:36 2016 No.3347713

>>3347696
Exactly. Commodore and Atari, even putting aside Tramiel's shady business practices, still only charged fair market prices for their computers which unfortunately meant they could never be as profitable as Apple's computers were. Mac owners in those days were artsy Bohemians who were more into the whole Apple hipster lifestyle than anything.

The one thing Apple did do right was wisely getting off the 680x0 and moving to PPCs when they saw that the 680x0 was nearing the end of the road while Commodore and Atari had no real plans for that. Other than that, Apple has always been complete rubbish and a non-factor in a European market where Commodore and Atari were king in the 80s-early 90s.

The iPod and iPhone however, these show clear signs of deft marketing AND design skills given the iPod wheel interface and the iPhone OS....both copied by others now. But we are talking about 80s Mac not what they do today. Jobs was useless with computers...his Next machine (basically an improved Amiga) sold peanuts and he it went to the wall...hmmmm

Also Atari destroyed themselves with that three legged wooden horse the Jag trying to go up against 3DO, PSX and Saturn (not a hope in hell) and blew millions pushing that dead horse around the racetrack full of thoroughbreds.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 17:11:58 2016 No.3347714 >>3347713 >Mac owners in those days were artsy Bohemians who were more into the whole Apple hipster lifestyle than anything. How is that different from today, except for that Apple's computers are overpriced generic PC hardware now?

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 17:17:51 2016 No.3347724 File: 300 KB, 986x790, TgXlC.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] WTF, Amiga was like SNES of computers. I wish there hadn't been any computers (PC, Mac..) after Amiga 500. I mean Commodore 64 was awesome, and A500 had 7x faster processor!

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 17:25:47 2016 No.3347741 >>3347724 >Amiga was like SNES of computers explain

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 17:27:58 2016 No.3347749

>>3347570
>Also he said quite a few Amigas were sold to local businesses but no idea if they had Atari STs

The ST had Lotus 123, Dbase and WordPerfect compatible software within 12 months, you load your Lotus 123 files into K-Spread by Kuma software in the GEM designed environment, edit them and then save them back in Lotus 123 format. The fact people didn't buy them is neither Kuma's fault or Atari's.

Also the most important point, nobody was going to port Lotus/WP/dBase to the ST because those programs cost almost as much as the computer itself

A 520ST with a color monitor cost $1000 and Lotus or Wordperfect cost $500, which was half the purchase price of the computer, so who in their right mind would do that? When you spent $5000 on an IBM AT, of course you could justify spending $500 on software, but not for a freaking $1000 computer.

As one other point, no sane company would replace their x86 infrastructure with...any 680x0 machine. You'd have to totally overhaul your infrastructure, retrain all your employees, purchase new software, provide extra tech support for people who couldn't figure out GEM/Workbench/whatever, and spend a ginormous amount of cash in doing so. This is on top of how there was no way in hell that Atari or Commodore could match IBM/Hewlett-Packard/Honeywell/DEC or whatever's tech and customer support services.

I agree that small to medium business users were not targeted however, a 3 box design of CPU base, monitor and at the very least high quality detachable keyboard being of paramount importance. The A1000 had a fantastic keyboard quality wise as did the Mac, but the ST was not really even as good to type on as a 1983 Memotech MTX512 or even a Commodore PET or MK1 VIC-20 (same keyboard as PET for first few 1000s). As a lot of of typing is going to be done on spreadsheets and word processors this was a false economy and not addressed until the superior Mega ST keyboard unit was sold.

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 17:29:42 2016 No.3347757

>>3347749
And of course, the big factor that Atari was seen as a toy brand who made silly video games. Had the ST been sold at that price in a 3 box business machine type design at that price with a Commodore badge things would have been very different. I'm not personally sure if Jack purposefully intended the ST to appear to be the ultimate home computer type thing with it's design or if that was a misfortune of using the old style home computer all-in-one keyboard design.

If you look at very early publicity shots for the ST you will notice the two SF314/SF354 disc drives sitting under the SM124 monitor a bit like a Mega ST base unit with the original ST/STM (a lot slimmer and more elegant than the STFM ham fisted design) placed a little way out like some massive model M IBM PC detachable keyboard. I suspect this was to gain a second look from businessmen who they feared would look at the all in one design and think 'toy'....this is on top of the huge image problem the name Atari gives out to businesses.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 17:29:52 2016 No.3347758 >>3347158 Unless you were a cassettefag, then you had to correct the header all the time, trying again and again and again....

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 17:36:40 2016 No.3347764

>>3347713
>Also Atari destroyed themselves with that three legged wooden horse the Jag trying to go up against 3DO, PSX and Saturn (not a hope in hell) and blew millions pushing that dead horse around the racetrack full of thoroughbreds

I disagree in the sense that the Jaguar was decently capable (and highly cost competitive -a key design feature) had it been managed better (not rushed out with a crippling CPU, numerous bugs, awful tools, and very limited software library). Really that comes down to management and money though, things seem to have declined in general under Sam's management (after Jack stepped down), who knows what might have happened with their computers had Jack stayed longer. (they'd lost too much ground by the time the Falcon came out, not to mention its limitations and compatibility issues) On the Jaguar in particular, I think Atari might have been able to benefit from Sega's screwing themselves over with infighting in the mid 90s and horrible decisions regarding Saturn, especially for the US, but especially prominent in Europe due to it being a Sega stronghold up to that point. (Europe could have been the ideal opening for Atari, with a reputation from their computers lacking in the US -falling back more on their old game console recognition there- Atari could have pushed into Sega's declining market had they managed the Jag fairly well, but they ended up screwing up about as bad as Sega -proportion to Sega's previous success with MegaDrive/Genesis -except in Japan, where Atari shouldn't have even bothered trying) So Saturn, perhaps under better context; Nintendo, probably way behind, and Sony, not a chance. (I mean the Saturn sold worse in the US than the Sega CD, not sure about Europe, but I wouldn't be too surprised even given the lower popularity of the Mega CD)

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 17:42:32 2016 No.3347772

>>3347342
I like the Apple IIgs but I generally group it with the Atari 130XE and Commodore 128: a successor to a popular 8-bit line. With the home computer market dying, the IIgs was Apple's last chance to get a final bunch of Apple II computers into schools before they all upgraded to a PC (PC were finally getting affordable and most schools were not going to upgrade to the Macintosh). Many schools here in NY did purchase one (the IIgs). Literally just one. Apple knew that many were not going to go to a MAC so the IIg was their last chance to hold on to some of those owners before everyone moved on to the PC.

At the time Atari was positioning its ST as a serious business computer that was a cheaper alternative to both the PC and the MAC. Atari was aggressive with serious business applications from the PC and MAC world like WordPerfect, Microsoft Word and DB Master One (the later two licensed and published by Atari) plus its really low price points. They were in 2 different worlds even though on paper they may seem similar and priced similar however the 520ST was cheaper than the IIgs and you would have to compare the 1040ST to get similar pricing.

Ironically it was its easy to use operating system and being able to display color that probably did the IIg in. Back then, educational computers were not suppose to feature bright colors and I remember my computer science teacher commenting when he first got the school's only IIgs that no one was going to take it seriously as an educational tool because it had so much vivid color and had an operating system that was not DOS. Anyone remember the fight when Microsoft announced they were getting rid of DOS after DOS 6? DOS was the king and a graphics operating system in color was not considered being serious.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 17:48:07 2016 No.3347782 File: 93 KB, 640x964, Eye of the Beholder_Front.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>3343931 Amiga showed me the ways of crpgs. Realms and knights was amazing too.

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 17:49:44 2016 No.3347787

>>3347772
The best part about the IIgs was how it could run 8-bit Apple II software. This was a big deal because a lot of people actually got to see Apple II games in color for the first time. For all the huge numbers of Apple IIs sold, sadly I'd guess about 70% of them had monochrome monitors.

The IIgs is easily better than the Atari 130XE or C128. Of course the 16-bit CPU helped but it's all about software at the end of the day and Sierra in particular actively supported the Apple II line up until about 1988-89. The IIgs had better ports of Sierra games than the ST and Amiga based alone on its amazing sound hardware. Of course the end came when Sierra didn't port their SCI engine onto the IIgs. To be fair, ST/Amiga software support in the US was also spotty, but it was definitely more and software from Europe was very strong and that was where the IIgs lose most. ST and Amiga owners will remember many games having manuals with what seems like a dozen or more languages! Compared to the ST and Amiga, the IIgs got less support overall.

Even so, the Atari ST with a Roland MT-32 and Sierra adventures...beautiful combination.

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 17:57:00 2016 No.3347802

I will give, the IIgs didn't last all that long and it doesn't seem like anybody but schools ever bought them. Apple had very successfully marketed themselves as "the educational computer" and a lot of white collar parents bought into it and bought their kids an Apple II without a color monitor and the expectation that the kid would automatically become a physics professor at MIT.

Now, and this is purely anecdotal and based on my own childhood, that kids who had Apple IIs generally _did_ have a higher chance of getting a college education than kids who owned an Atari or Commodore who tended more often to end up in blue collar grunt jobs. Their parents were generally poorer and would just buy the computer, a disk drive, and a box of blank disks and tell them to pirate any software they needed.

Whenever I talk to the president or owner of a company, an important VIP or someone who had a 1500 or higher SAT score and we end up talking about our childhood computers, I always make sure to mention that the Apple IIe was the computer I grew up with and sweep the Atari and Commodore under the rug. "Oh yeah, remember Oregon Trail and Agent USA?! How could we live without it! Great fun! Great fun!" I technically do have an Apple IIe when my older relatives gave it to me as hand me down because they know I am a collector except I did not get one till I was 22!

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 18:02:31 2016 No.3347813 >>3347802 Silly, of course the Apple II had many of the same games as the C64, but kids had pirated disks of them they hid in a shoebox under their bed where Mom and Dad couldn't find out.

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 18:06:39 2016 No.3347828

>>3347334
Depends on the game. Some could multitask with other Workbench software. Most of the action games didn't because they needed all the machine's resources anyway (and there isn't much to spare on a 7 MHz machine with 512 KB to 1 MB of memory). Also, they did that for copy-protection reasons, to make it harder for pirates. In fact they often used custom floppy disk routines (not the regular filesystem) to make it that much harder.
Even PC action games in early/mid 90's didn't multitask well, if at all. Nobody ran Doom while booted in Windows 3.1 for example. And DOS itself didn't multitask at all, unless you used DESQview maybe (but that was mostly just useful for stuff like running BBS in the background, not so much resource-intensive games).
Anyway Windows 3.1 quite frankly sucked compared to Workbench. And you have to compare the later versions of WB, not just the original 1.x versions.

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 18:08:11 2016 No.3347831

Well...I was born and raised on PC games (though not in the 80s as I was born at the end of the decade) and I'm a cultured, well-read patrician. On the other hand, the scuzzballs who wore Stone Cold Steve Austin T-shirts to school all had game consoles especially PS1s.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 18:09:35 2016 No.3347836 >>3347828 I thought that Sierra and LucasArts adventures ran off Workbench, but then those don't have that much animation going on.

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 18:14:11 2016 No.3347840
File: 7 KB, 512x384, leisure-suit-larry-in-the-land-of-the-lounge-lizards_1.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

>>3347836
They could have. IDK. I know Sierra did put some of their games on the Mac and of course that doesn't let you monopolize the computer's entire resources.

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 18:14:21 2016 No.3347841
File: 20 KB, 640x400, xcopyxmas92ger.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

>>3347403
Nice, but I would totally replace that nasty A4000 with a cute A500.
Also, I miss the days when software didn't try to be so fucking "professional" all the time (i.e. sterile and ugly).

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 18:16:02 2016 No.3347846 >>3347841 it says "professional" right there on the screen

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 18:19:49 2016 No.3347859
File: 6 KB, 641x427, 1aac29461f4179a7d301a6124fd5d5db.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

>>3347841
Dude, most software back then sure as hell DID try to look clinical and sterile. Like corporate America was really going to use software with a cartoony snowman dude and junk everywhere. Heh heh, yeah right.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 18:22:19 2016 No.3347863 >>3347840 Yes and Macs had absolutely no action games on them back then.

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 18:36:53 2016 No.3347887

>>3347846
But it's clearly not. A lot of Amiga software was more like a home computer and hacker environment than office.

>>3347859
Well maybe americans missed out on the fun then.

Heck, even some actual games tried to present a more unique interface or their own special touch. Like when Leander boots up, you get a spinning computer chip and text that says "extra memory detected and used" while the game loads and some music plays in background. Ork has nice title screen with beautiful logo and panning background and sweet music. Those are some of the little things I miss. The cracktros too.

Anyway computers weren't as serious all the time during home computer era, and I guess part of that is because the games and stuff were made by small teams, not big huge corporations. That's where the nasty sterile, uncreative stuff comes from. That's why computers aren't fun anymore.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 18:40:25 2016 No.3347897 >>3343931 The Amiga was revolutionary for the time AS A COMPUTER. Full color GFX + Multitasking in one neat package made it a legend. Also, fucking Lemmings.

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 18:54:39 2016 No.3347921

>>3347887
>Anyway computers weren't as serious all the time during home computer era, and I guess part of that is because the games and stuff were made by small teams, not big huge corporations. That's where the nasty sterile, uncreative stuff comes from. That's why computers aren't fun anymore.
It has less to do with that than cultural reasons - Yuropoors and Japs like cutesy things with bright colors, but Americans don't. Everything has to look like it was carved out of granite.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 19:00:09 2016 No.3347931 >>3344025 Probably because no one has seriously said it since like 2008.

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 19:01:55 2016 No.3347938

>>3347887
Even back at that time, it showed in the kind of games we had on computers. Say, F-19 Stealth Fighter was the archetypical American game while Dizzy or Creatures was the archetypical European game, that is to say, cute, lots of pastel colors, and anthro animals.

Some of our games were more cartoony like Sierra and LucasArts stuff, but by and large it was mostly war sims or RPGs or crap like that.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 19:06:13 2016 No.3347956 File: 320 KB, 1914x1150, Compaq_Portable.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] Home computers like the ZX Spectrum and Amiga, those appealed to European sensibilities because they were small, neat, and cute. This is not so much.

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 19:22:19 2016 No.3347998

>>3347365
The 68000 was probably the single best ever CPU in terms of comparisons to the competition of it's time.

The so-called "future" versions of Z80 and 6502 were pieces of crap in comparison to the 68000, let alone the later variants like 68020/30/40.

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 19:30:50 2016 No.3348016

>>3347998
I agree. The 68000's programming model still feels pretty modern even today. While it's not orthogonal, it's still pretty good for a CPU released 36 years ago. Since RISC didn't yet exist in 1980 and the 68000 was more designed with the idea of supporting compilers.

The Z800 and Z80000 were never released to production much like the 6509 which could have been a factor had it come out in the late 70s like intended. The 65816 borrows a lot from it.

The Z8000 however definitely did make it to production and was used in various stuff like Unix workstations, embedded applications, and by the military. It's better and easier to use than the Z80 but unlike the 68000, it doesn't have 32 bit registers or the nice, flat memory map. The TMS9900 was closer to the Z8000 design-wise than the 68000, but has some assorted kludges like external registers and not as good of an instruction set. A computer based on the Z8000 could have been a formidable force in the early 80s, but I don't think it was priced right for the personal computer market.

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 19:33:34 2016 No.3348023

There is a rumour that the Z800 was so powerful that the USA military took it for its missiles.

Anyway Zilog finally released it in 1989 as the Z280, it provided protected memory, bank switching and a lot of other things. It could have been very good for a 16-bits UNIX like the one in PDP-11 or even Minix, but unfortunately it was too late. Finally the Z280 was discontinued my middle 1990's and completely erasen from Zilog history (now it's very hard to find any info)

I've saw also a Z380 that had 32 bits registers, it doesn't had success and also was wiped out.

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 19:40:50 2016 No.3348040

>>3348023
Really? I'd think a custom IC or ASIC would be more appropriate for a missile. Also I've never heard of the Z800 being used for military applications but it's been stated that the US military has used Z8000s and Zilog's catalog still lists them as available. That may be where the rumor about the Z800 came from.

I have my doubts about the Z800 and UNIX but some form of enhanced CP/M or MP/M would make a lot of sense. The whole reason for backwards compatibility is to run old apps or allow easy migration to the new chip at least at the source code level. CP/M and MP/M encourage migration of software but UNIX requires a new code base. Unix is also commonly associated with C and I'm not sure the Z800 register model was a significant improvement in that regard.

In fact the Z8000 was better for Unix than any Z80 derivative and Commodore could have taken the world by storm with the Commodore 900, but for whatever reason it was ordered cancelled after the Amiga purchase in '84 which makes no sense because the two product lines weren't in competition with each other.

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 19:49:50 2016 No.3348061

>>3347370
For your money, the 6809 was more than 3x the CPU the 6502 was and one of the biggest advantages of it is that 6809 assembly language is _much_ more compact than 6502 asm. It takes about 40% less code to do something on a 6809. Notice that on the CoCo Extended Color BASIC, a lot of the advanced features from GWBASIC were included like the PLAY and DRAW commands. This wouldn't have been possible on an Apple II or other 6502 machines.

Writing 6809 code is also much easier and less time-consuming than 6502 code. It's too bad the 6809's potential was never realized because the 6502 was so firmly established by 1980 that it couldn't be easily dislodged.

Anonymous Sat Jul 9 20:13:52 2016 No.3348103
File: 871 KB, 2890x1952, Sabu_with_his_Tandy_1000_Computer.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

>>3347757
>I suspect this was to gain a second look from businessmen who they feared would look at the all in one design and think 'toy'
Well PC systems could also look like that. Also MSX and other 80's computers.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 20:29:53 2016 No.3348134 >>3344695 >paula sound chip >shit http://modarchive.org/index.php?request=view_by_moduleid&query=42560

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 20:33:13 2016 No.3348145 >>3348134 wasn't awesome composed on paula?

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 20:33:13 2016 No.3348146 >>3345015 amigas actually can run wipeout 2097, look it up

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 21:21:52 2016 No.3348214 >>3348103 Except the Tandy 1000 was a home computer never once targeted at the business market.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 21:47:51 2016 No.3348268 >>3348214 Thus proving that american business is pure evil. They wouldn't want a cute machine and matching cat to decorate their office and bring a small joy to their employees lives.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 21:53:30 2016 No.3348279 File: 100 KB, 799x599, PCWrite_02.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>3348268 Yeh but you never saw the manual for PC Write.

>>	Anonymous Sat Jul 9 22:05:27 2016 No.3348293 >>3346458 That's not as bad as I would have thought. When I hear "expensive" I expected something like 150 smickety smackers.

>>	Anonymous Sun Jul 10 00:52:04 2016 No.3348501 >>3347931 It's basically a fossil of a fossil at this point, even in 2008 furry was getting to be old hat.

>>	Anonymous Sun Jul 10 00:55:41 2016 No.3348514 File: 46 KB, 244x253, snip_20151220143818.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>3343992 So is "ironic jacking off" also something you do? How does that work?

>>	Anonymous Sun Jul 10 02:56:59 2016 No.3348729 >>3343931 it was great for its time and having a large community it was easy to find people to copy games from. beats owning a NES and being stuck with the one or two games you got at Christmas.

Anonymous Sun Jul 10 05:05:22 2016 No.3348861

>>3347665

In Poland developers were working hard to publish Doom/Wolf3D clones on Amigas.

And they succeeded, more or less:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuhUI686y8o
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWnSRDYBsBU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBmwpuryVYY

>>	Anonymous Sun Jul 10 05:18:56 2016 No.3348878 >>3348729 Poland didn't have Famiclones and multicarts?

>>	Anonymous Sun Jul 10 06:18:46 2016 No.3348932 File: 147 KB, 601x693, deer no.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>3347956 and it's called the Compaq Portable, of all things?!

Anonymous Sun Jul 10 06:25:07 2016 No.3348941

>>3348932
it's considerably more portable than the alternative. The purpose of that machine is not that you can whip it out at the nearest starbucks. You can use it on business travels to have your stuff accessible in the hotel room at the evening. It's "portable" in the sense of taking the machine on travels, in one simple package.

>>	Anonymous Sun Jul 10 08:19:13 2016 No.3349093 >>3348941 >implying anyone outside of Seattle had heard of Starbucks in the mid-1980s

>>	Anonymous Sun Jul 10 08:46:38 2016 No.3349124 >>3347154 That's par for the course when it comes to furfags

Anonymous Sun Jul 10 08:59:11 2016 No.3349135

>>3348932
They did not have true laptops until the second half of the 80s and those were still awfully hefty, but by the 90s laptops had reached roughly modern size. I have a Thinkpad 380D from '97 and it's actually more compact and easier to carry around than my Pavilion g7.

>>	Anonymous Sun Jul 10 09:02:27 2016 No.3349145 >>3349135 >They did not have true laptops until it's called a portable, not a laptop. Different things

>>	Anonymous Sun Jul 10 09:22:20 2016 No.3349160 >>3348279 I used that a _lot_ on a 386 laptop once.

>>	Anonymous Sun Jul 10 09:23:45 2016 No.3349162 I guess the closest early thing to laptop was stuff like TRS-80 Model 100, which could actually be used on your lap, unlike the big & heavy "portables" by Osborne, Kaypro, Compaq, etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80_Model_100

>>	Anonymous Sun Jul 10 09:32:50 2016 No.3349172 >>3347938 I don't get it. why you Americans insist everything has to be big macho tough guy.

>>	Anonymous Sun Jul 10 09:38:23 2016 No.3349179 >>3349172 it doesn't. But america has a really strong hero worship culture, something that largely died in europe during the world wars. As a result they love war games, tactical games, and games with "heroes" in the military sense

>>	Anonymous Sun Jul 10 09:59:45 2016 No.3349203 >>3349179 Aren't Germans obsessed with simulations?

>>	Anonymous Sun Jul 10 10:04:00 2016 No.3349207 >>3349203 that's their engineering trait. Plenty german simulations are not military in nature

>>	Anonymous Sun Jul 10 10:10:14 2016 No.3349212 File: 1.55 MB, 2894x2183, a1200.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>3347225 Of course

>>	Anonymous Sun Jul 10 10:14:06 2016 No.3349215 File: 42 KB, 1015x275, cropped-1.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

>>	Anonymous Sun Jul 10 10:18:02 2016 No.3349221 >>3349179 Yuropoors had all of their machismo beaten out of them. Or more accurately, all the tough, courageous guys died in the two world wars and only the nu males survived.

>>	Anonymous Sun Jul 10 10:19:26 2016 No.3349224 File: 2.85 MB, 4000x6000, DCSF0009.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>3349212

>>	Anonymous Sun Jul 10 10:20:46 2016 No.3349226 File: 1.01 MB, 3264x2448, c64-lit.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>3349224

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/vr/ - Retro Games