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Amiga 1000 - Too Expensive at Introduction or not Priced High Enough?


rpiguy9907

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I have recently taken apart and refurbished an Amiga 1000, Commodore 128, and a Commodore 1571.

 

I am baffled at why the Amiga 1000 was so much more expensive ($1295) than the Commodore 128+1571 combo ($700 often discounted further even at intro).

 

I know they had the Amiga 1000 manufactured in Japan instead of Hong Kong and yields on the Amiga chips were initially poor... but the IC count is higher on the Commodore 128+1571 combo and the number of custom chips is about the same (VIC-II, SID, VDC) and the VDC also had terrible yields. The C128 system even had three CPUs (if you count the one in the 1571).

 

The mother board of the A1000 is needlessly complex and the daughterboard for the Kickstart ROM completely unecessary (why not just give the thing a cartridge port and let people upgrade ROM that way?)

 

Memory wasn't even that expensive in 1985, the RAM price spike of the 80s was two years away.

 

*****

On the other side of the equation, maybe it would have benefited from even higher premium pricing? A comparable IBM AT with a PGA or Orchid 4096 color card was at least 4x as expensive, and the Macintosh was 2x-3x as expensive and was B&W only.

 

*****

 

So I am torn, I can't decide if Commodore should have been more thrifty in producing the A1000 and introducing it at $799 or if they should have doubled the price.

Edited by rpiguy9907
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I think it is better to compare with the Atari ST which was significantly cheaper. Yes, it had fewer newly made custom chips. Also by your reasoning there are only production costs involved, engineers work 2 years for free or that Commodore should have enough money in the bank to pay wages for R&D without putting any of that onto the final product. The C128 to a much higher degree consisted of older technology that already had paid off itself, plus at least the 8502 was made by CSG themselves which boils down the external chip costs to Z80 vs 68000, RAM etc.

 

In order to sell a more expensive product, Commodore needed greater industry recognition and support. One could ask if the 1000 was the right model to launch, if they should have made an even more expandable model like the 2000, or even gone straight for the home market right away, though at its launch I don't know how much they could cost reduce the 1000.

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True Commodore would have wanted to recoup their investment in Amiga. I think that represents the difference in thinking between Tramiel and "real" management. Tramiel would have written off the R&D costs, much in the same way he made MOS fab chips for practically nothing (MOS probably would have made more money selling chips to outside companies).

 

You are probably correct with the chip packaging technology they had in 1985 (limited to 48 pins) they couldn't have taken out too much cost. The daughterboard I think stands as a real example of one thing that should have gotten the axe.

 

Sell a model with one less CIA and drop the serial port, delete the disk drive and add a cartridge port, reduce the number of PLA and connecting logic. But yes if they did this they should also have an expandable model to compliment it.

 

Ideally they would have launched with both a low cost model they could sell mass market, and an expandable one, but they just couldn't afford it at the time with the Z-machine, LCD machine, Commodore 128 and all the other projects going on.

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I have recently taken apart and refurbished an Amiga 1000, Commodore 128, and a Commodore 1571.

 

I am baffled at why the Amiga 1000 was so much more expensive ($1295) than the Commodore 128+1571 combo ($700 often discounted further even at intro).

 

I know they had the Amiga 1000 manufactured in Japan instead of Hong Kong and yields on the Amiga chips were initially poor... but the IC count is higher on the Commodore 128+1571 combo and the number of custom chips is about the same (VIC-II, SID, VDC) and the VDC also had terrible yields. The C128 system even had three CPUs (if you count the one in the 1571).

 

The mother board of the A1000 is needlessly complex and the daughterboard for the Kickstart ROM completely unecessary (why not just give the thing a cartridge port and let people upgrade ROM that way?)

 

Memory wasn't even that expensive in 1985, the RAM price spike of the 80s was two years away.

 

*****

On the other side of the equation, maybe it would have benefited from even higher premium pricing? A comparable IBM AT with a PGA or Orchid 4096 color card was at least 4x as expensive, and the Macintosh was 2x-3x as expensive and was B&W only.

 

*****

 

So I am torn, I can't decide if Commodore should have been more thrifty in producing the A1000 and introducing it at $799 or if they should have doubled the price.

They made a lot of dumb decisions. One anecdote that comes to mind is from an Amiga anniversary party up on YT where a couple of the engineers are reminiscing about the good old days of engineering the Amgia. They went to a TV store and bought several of the worst TVs they sold. They literally went into the store and asked for the worst possible TV set so they could design an interface that would work well on the cheapest set out there. This is why it has that horrible color scheme by default. This is indicative of the mistakes they made. They were trying to fill a market niche' that did not exist. WHO was going to buy this expensive computer (Well over 3 grand in today;s dollars) and then hook it up to the cheapest television they could find? I don't think it even had a TV output on the MB! They should have had it run in a higher resolution and required a monitor.

 

 

They needed to either dramatically lower the price or gave it more power and capability at a higher price. Simply selling the existing Amiga at a higher price was probably not going to help. They could have made changes and still came in way under the price of the competition, even with a monitor. There should have been an internal HD option. There should have been a standardized expansion bus right from the beginning with the 1000. They could have offered a 1000 without the expansion bus as the 'home' edition rather than the awful design of the 500/600/1200.

 

The Amiga 2000 should have been the 1000 with flicker free hires graphics with a hard disk or 2nd floppy option in 1985, not 87. The 386 was two years old in 1987!

 

By 1985, there were already lots of cards available for PCs, so it's not like Commodore didn't know there was a big market for them (not to mention a need).

 

It would have been nice if they could have eliminated the need for chip/fast RAM and handled all RAM the same. Separating the two completely would have been a better, if not more expensive, alternative (just like EGA or VGA's RAM is entirely dedicated to the EGA/VGA card). According to Trameil, 256k RAM modules were a few dollars around this time. Dedicating 256K to the chips with an additional 512k as 'fast' RAM is another place where a slight price increase would have paid off in the long run.

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  • 1 month later...

Yes, one wonders how it might have played out had the launch machines been the 500 and 2000 instead of the 1000. I had a Commodore 128 at the time and had the 500 been out (at a price I could afford) I would have probably gone down that path first instead of switching to a PC. Who knows if that would have made things turn out differently in the end, but I have to think people buying Commodore machines might not have looked around so quickly if they could have gotten a 500 priced machine initially.

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Did you link to wrong issue I see nothing on 14-15.

On Page 14
"It looks like CBM is lowering the price of the Amiga 1000, as the current model is known... now selling the system for $999 (US), $300 less than the original retail price. More incredibly, they are selling a packaged system consisting of the Amiga 1000, the RGB monitor and cable, the 256K RAM cartridge, and an Epson JX-80 colour printer with cable, all for $1195!"
And on page 16
"'The Atari [sT] is a very good computer at a terrific price, while the Amiga is a terrific computer at a very good price.'"
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The topic is "Amiga 1000 - Too Expensive at Introduction or not Priced High Enough?" with both a news article's perspective on the price point of the Amiga 1000 soon after launch, along with a quote from a non-journalist computer user.

 

If you can't see the contextual relevance of that to the OP's post, then I'm sure I can recommend a good optometrist.

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The info in the book, "Commodore: The Amiga Years" suggests that the launch pricing for the Amiga 1000 was fine in North America but too high in UK and Europe.

 

North American specialty shops demanded as many Amiga 1000 computers as Commodore could manufacture. That and the above article suggest that for those who were shopping for a hardware-accelerated 'color Mac', the Amiga was a good deal.

 

So even with the inflated manufacturing costs out of Japan, I agree that there was pricing flexibility to include more RAM as well as a hard drive controller (if not a hard drive too). The designers wanted more RAM from the get-go and Jay Miner wanted an expandable case more like the 2000 -- right out of the gate. He was also a big fan of the flicker fixer.

 

Regardless, Commodore would still be relying on specialty shops since most computer retail chains were happy just selling PCs and Commodore had already alienated most of the large department store chains. Plus, the Amiga 1000 was too expensive for most department stores to consider as a product.

 

Having the machine built for less would have certainly given them more margin so that they could possibly even offer it at a better price-point on the other side of the pond.

 

As for the Amiga 500 -- I think it's actually a good design. It's remarkably expandable, despite its footprint. That and it fit the bill for what the European market wanted.

 

The Amiga certainly did have two identities. And I also agree that if the goal was to make a serious computer, the monitor and a de-interlacer should have been mandatory.

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The topic is "Amiga 1000 - Too Expensive at Introduction or not Priced High Enough?" with both a news article's perspective on the price point of the Amiga 1000 soon after launch, along with a quote from a non-journalist computer user.

 

If you can't see the contextual relevance of that to the OP's post, then I'm sure I can recommend a good optometrist.

Um, I am the OP (perhaps you need the optometrist, lol. ) and I specifically pointed out things like IC count and manufacturing cost, of which nothing was mentioned in the small, unrelated news blurb about a price cut in the user group magazine.

 

Commodore: The Amiga Years does go into detail about the A1000 being made in Japan instead of Hong Kong making it pricier, as well as the added cost of the mezzanine PCB for Kickstart.

 

The book is also very clear that very few dealers sold the A1000 the first year due to mistrust of Commodore.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Which reminds me, I should get new glasses at some point... :)

 

How about an answer of yes to both your questions.

 

Too expensive for people comparing the Amiga to the Atari ST and not priced enough for people expecting a competitor to the popular business machines of the day.

 

 

And by "not expensive enough" I'm thinking that a few things could have been added to make it more competitive in the business arena (like a rock-steady display).

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  • 3 years later...

The Amiga 1000 was not sold in cheap stores like the C64 etc, the dealer markup was probably much higher for those specialist small scale computer dealers that the Amiga 1000 was exclusively stocked in. Apart from the Z80 I think MOS Technology manufactured every IC in the C128, even that EGA knock-off 80 column chip was their own. The Amiga 1000 also had 4 times the memory of the C128 and DRAM was expensive. The Commodore 128 is another Commodore cock-up, all the market actually wanted was a 128k C64 or a 64k RAM cart for the C64. The Commodore 128 was easily the most expensive of the 128k wave of rehashed 8bits compared to rivals from Atari, Sinclair, Amstrad. With the Sinclair machine you got improved spec and more memory, with Commodore the 128 in 2mhz mode would only work with that duff 80 column reject chip and the Z80 and 65xx class CPU NEVER could be used together but you paid for all the engineering complexity of putting a Z80 inside it. Still, the C128/128D/128DCR sold about 4.5 million units, it took Commodore until the early 1990s to sell 3 million Amigas, late 1989 IIRC for 1 million.

 

Apparently there was a lot of production problems in 1985 so they couldn't even manufacture them in quantity until 1986, and they didn't want to do that they wanted a niche lucrative i.e. huge cost/huge dealer markup type alternative to the Mac. The people selling Commodore 128 and 520ST units had much lower profit margins than the specialists getting the tiny quantities of Amiga 1000 machines in 1985 too.

 

There is also the slight issue of 512k RAM AND an extra 192 of protected WORM Kickstart RAM making a 256k Amiga more like the cost of a 520ST in DRAM chips alone. It had a complex daughterboard + motherboard construction, very expensive keyboard of a non standard layout and high quality mechanism, complex and expensive case design, 3.5 vs 5.25 drive mechs, much higher build quality components and Commodore bought 68000 CPUs in much smaller quantities. Not even sure CSG/MOS actually manufactured their own custom chips for Commodore unlike all their other machines from PET to C128 and later A500 with CSG stamped ICs all over the boards.

 

I own just about every computer and console that ever had a PAL output from VCS/Videopac to Xbox 360/Wii. The A1000 was probably the finest build quality of any machine at any price on sale in 1986 to boot.

 

You can't really look at the components and work anything out, what you actually need is manufacturing costs for machines. I don't think there is any official figures for exactly how much each A1000 cost Commodore. 

 

Ultimately Irving Gould bought Amiga for $40 million out of pure spite, shame there was nobody at Commodore who had a clue what they were doing in 1984 onward and Gould was one of the most greedy computer company owners in the world. 

 

In an interview some of the original Los Gatos team talk about a retail price of about $800 for Amiga once they had reduced the prototype boards into single ICs. Not sure where Zymos fit into this 1983/1984 period, if at all.

 

It is Irving Gould and the clueless fools at Commodore who made the Amiga 1000 as some sort of niche product, if Jack was still at Commodore you can bet it would have gone on sale at a few hundred dollars more than the 1986 520STM instead of three times the price.

 

Oh well, by the time the A500/2000 came out it was technically not the best thing in the world, that honour goes to the Acorn Archimedes, a far superior machine that cost only £150 more than the so called cheap A500 in Summer 1987.

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Yes.

 

51 minutes ago, oky2000 said:

The Amiga 1000 was not sold in cheap stores like the C64 etc, the dealer markup was probably much higher for those specialist small scale computer dealers that the Amiga 1000 was exclusively stocked in.

I had gotten my A1000 from a specialty shop. I really wanted a PC even at that early juncture. But the lure of the color graphics and cheaper price was a huge deciding factor. Had the A1000 been priced higher it might have appealed to a different clientele. But C= was not prepared to behave in a way that would satisfy that bunch.

 

This behavior would mean having a world-wide support network. Doing instead of promising. Having real-world software on the shelf ready to ring up at the cash register and take with you, not vaporous promises like "coming soon" and "in development now". What's a businessman supposed to do? Sit there and watch C= politics hash out trivial nonsense?

 

51 minutes ago, oky2000 said:

The Commodore 128 is another Commodore cock-up, all the market actually wanted was a 128k C64 or a 64k RAM cart for the C64.

Yes. I would have liked a 128K C64 rather than a whole different system that felt patched together or felt like 2 different machines exclusive of each other.

 

In the Apple II world, we had several upgraded models that came after the OG Apple II, the II+, the //e, //c, Enhanced //e, //c+, IIgs, and Platinum //e.

 

One upgrade cycle, going from the II+ to the //e, gave us 64K base memory. And a moderately cheap card doubled that to 128K and 80-columns. As a bonus we also got Double HiRes graphics. A standardized 80-column solution that lots of software actually used.

 

We also had a plethora of reasonably priced Z-80 cards to pick from. Most all were interchangeable, with the major differences being on-board RAM options and a few speed/price points. By and large, CP/M on Apple II was a rather straightforward experience that just worked.

 

We also got a 65C02 too, along with MouseText (a simpler version of petscii/atasci). All of this was forward and backward compatible. And because it optional on all but the last models, it didn't break the bank early on.

 

52 minutes ago, oky2000 said:

There is also the slight issue of 512k RAM AND an extra 192 of protected WORM Kickstart RAM making a 256k Amiga more like the cost of a 520ST in DRAM chips alone.

Well not only that. It was a bigger issue starting the system up. No business or professional wants to fart around swapping floppies just to get the system going. Certainly not in the day of the newfangled 10MB HDDs like in the PC. One power-on switch is enough thankyouverymuch!

 

Cost really wasn't an issue. It was the clumsiness and fumbling around. IMHO.

 

52 minutes ago, oky2000 said:

Oh well, by the time the A500/2000 came out it was technically not the best thing in the world, that honour goes to the Acorn Archimedes, a far superior machine that cost only £150 more than the so called cheap A500 in Summer 1987.

Here in the USA the PC had yet to get going for the home user. That would begin changing in a big way in 1989-1992. Important years with faster 386 machines. And soon Windows 3.1 on the upcoming 486 rigs.

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So, was the Amiga 1000 too expensive at launch or not priced high enough?  I will say that the 1000 was too expensive at launch, but not because it didn't necessarily warrant the price.  It was too expensive considering what Commodore had turned itself into by the time of its release.  The Vic-20 and C64 had put Commodore into Jack Trammel's vision of "computers for the masses, not the classes".  So, for Commodore to go from the pricing of the Vic-20 and C64 to what the Amiga 1000 was probably a big shock and not something Commodore was really truly ready to market and/or sell.  However, once they released the 500 and 2000 Commodore seemingly had a pathway forward of having a higher end machine with a lower end machine.  But, Commodore messed that up once Thomas Rattigan was fired and a slew of other moronic decisions followed afterward.

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It's neither.  The real problem was lack of clear strategy and communication of what this machine can do, who is it for and so on, as well as not enough killer app software at the start. A500/2000 were great next-step models, but at that time 2 crucial years were sort of lost to the ST.

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On 6/20/2018 at 10:00 AM, rpiguy9907 said:

I have recently taken apart and refurbished an Amiga 1000, Commodore 128, and a Commodore 1571.

 

I am baffled at why the Amiga 1000 was so much more expensive ($1295) than the Commodore 128+1571 combo ($700 often discounted further even at intro).

Actual cost of parts isn't the whole picture here. There's R&D, manufacturing, marketing, distribution, support, and so much more. And then there's perceived value.

 

Amiga's price put it in the expensive toy category. Not expensive enough to attract businesses by saying, "You're getting a lot, there's infrastructure and support, and it's in demand. That's why the high cost."

 

The Amiga's architecture prevented easy upgrades. Everything was designed around NTSC and video. Whereas with PC you could just plug in a new videochip or soundchip. On a board of course.

 

On 6/20/2018 at 10:00 AM, rpiguy9907 said:

The mother board of the A1000 is needlessly complex and the daughterboard for the Kickstart ROM completely unecessary (why not just give the thing a cartridge port and let people upgrade ROM that way?)

Yes. Pretty sure they went with this because the ROM code wasn't finalized. The daughterboard is a big bodge.

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Yep, the daughterboard was because the OS wasn't finished and they needed to launch the machine. The comparison with the C128 is slightly skewed as well by the fact that the C128 had to be priced very cheaply for what it was, because people didn't really see the big advantage over the C64 (itself very cheaply priced by being sold in the millions). So if the C128 was more conventionally priced based on what was in it, it probably would have been a bit closer to the A1000 price.

 

Chip count is one thing, the types of chips were another. Sure, both had custom chips, but the Amiga had four times as much RAM for example (including 256kB on the WCS daughterboard). Ram was expensive back then - in 1984/85, RAM cost around $1 per kB. Even up to the end of the Amiga in 1994, the RAM was typically the single most expensive line of the BOM.

 

Yes, the Amiga was designed around video, which gave it some critical advantages over PCs, but it was also designed to be easily expandable. It might have been external for the A1000, but the Zorro bus was still an advanced expansion system that would not be surpassed in terms of capability until PCI came along. At the time of the A1000, graphics cards weren't really necessary as the onboard graphics already surpassed most PCs' capabilities, but they could have been used if they had been developed. The A2000 from 1987 could add them internally of course, just like PCs.

Edited by Daedalus2097
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On 7/22/2022 at 3:35 PM, Hwlngmad said:

So, was the Amiga 1000 too expensive at launch or not priced high enough?  I will say that the 1000 was too expensive at launch, but not because it didn't necessarily warrant the price.  It was too expensive considering what Commodore had turned itself into by the time of its release.  The Vic-20 and C64 had put Commodore into Jack Trammel's vision of "computers for the masses, not the classes".  So, for Commodore to go from the pricing of the Vic-20 and C64 to what the Amiga 1000 was probably a big shock and not something Commodore was really truly ready to market and/or sell.  However, once they released the 500 and 2000 Commodore seemingly had a pathway forward of having a higher end machine with a lower end machine.  But, Commodore messed that up once Thomas Rattigan was fired and a slew of other moronic decisions followed afterward.

The mono Mac was a low selling niche product even up to the 512k Mac of 1985/86 in the grand scheme of things, it did make sales to a niche market but until Apple got it's act together with the LC 475 etc £1000 68040 25mhz machines (half the price of the Amiga 4000/040 in 1992/93) it really wasn't going to make any inroads. In the early days Apple was making profit but only because their profit margins were massive.

 

If you remove the savvy Apple marketing for the Mac (that kooky Amiga 1000 advert with naff special effects trying to copy the end scene from 2001 the movie? LOL) from the equation and the lack of industry standard adherence of Amiga (not just OS and apps but who is going to re-train teams of engineers in fault finding/repairing Amiga 1000s?) you have utter failure.

 

Commodore really had only one option, go mass market, it should always have been a mass market machine. The Amiga 1000 is a beautifully built piece of kit to be sure, a joy to use, but a bit overkill when most rival PCs were huge tank like uncouth noisy rubbish anyway. Should have gone head to head with Atari in 1985 but they really didn't have the financial muscle to ride out that sort of initial loss or the in-house manufacturing to make the Amiga at $100-200 above the 520ST price feasible. The production yields of working units was pitiful, not until 1986 did they get any kind of momentum in making Amiga 1000s even if they had worked out where to sell them (not small potatoes specialist dealers). It was a complete and utter failure and in 1986 they actually gave up on the 1000 and then got stuffed when the A500 project ran into massive delays (don't ask me why, they just removed the daughterboard with Kickstart RAM and replaced the whole lot with a GARY and ROM chip socket!!). They also didn't even get Jay Miner involved in the A500 project AND rejected Jay's 68020 based equivalent of the Amiga 2000 he was working on and went with the hideous useless A2000 project from C= Germany.

 

The PC was always going to win, if Commodore wanted to keep the respect of the business users and play in the expensive professional market [in Europe] they should have just gone with their initial Z8000/68000 based 16bit PET project to counter the 8086 PC march in 1983/84 timeline not blow $40m on the king of multimedia/desktop video solutions. Like I said, Irving Gould only bought the company to spite Jack as they hated each other by 1984. The advantages Amiga brought to users had minimal use in a world that didn't even understand what desktop video/digital darkroom or even sound sampling could do for them. Digi-view and Digi-paint was doing things 24 months earlier would cost you $30,000 to do.

 

Let's not forget Amstrad raided the PC market with their 1985/86 price busting 8086 PC 1512 package starting at only £100 above the 520STM/STFM price. This was a major blow for any chance Commodore or Atari had, if people wanted a PC they could get one for the price of a 520STM and SF314 pretty much. Offices in the UK were stuffed to bursting point with those hideous PC 1512 Amstrad PCs (which were much faster than the Atari PC1 with it's lowly 8088 CPU).

 

I can't comment about the US markets but in the EU the Amiga sold despite all the mistakes of Commodore. As for Atari, the STFM went down to £299.99 twice (it had to go back up to £399.99 around the time Commodore finally dropped the A500 to 399.99). There was a point when Silica shop could sell you a 520STFM for about £270 but the Amiga was nearly £200 more circa 1987 and had the first DRAM problems of the 80s not happened the ST would have been much more successful. Not much Atari could do about that, perhaps MOS was making their own DRAMs for Amiga?. The DRAM problem is also the reason the Amstrad/Sinclair branded 8086 PC all-in-one rival to ST and Amiga was pulled from the shelves within months of going on sale, Amstrad allocated all DRAM stocks to production of their business lines of PCs which were selling like crazy for the previous 12 months. Strange times.

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12 hours ago, Daedalus2097 said:

Yep, the daughterboard was because the OS wasn't finished and they needed to launch the machine. The comparison with the C128 is slightly skewed as well by the fact that the C128 had to be priced very cheaply for what it was, because people didn't really see the big advantage over the C64 (itself very cheaply priced by being sold in the millions). So if the C128 was more conventionally priced based on what was in it, it probably would have been a bit closer to the A1000 price.

 

Chip count is one thing, the types of chips were another. Sure, both had custom chips, but the Amiga had four times as much RAM for example (including 256kB on the WCS daughterboard). Ram was expensive back then - in 1984/85, RAM cost around $1 per kB. Even up to the end of the Amiga in 1994, the RAM was typically the single most expensive line of the BOM.

 

Yes, the Amiga was designed around video, which gave it some critical advantages over PCs, but it was also designed to be easily expandable. It might have been external for the A1000, but the Zorro bus was still an advanced expansion system that would not be surpassed in terms of capability until PCI came along. At the time of the A1000, graphics cards weren't really necessary as the onboard graphics already surpassed most PCs' capabilities, but they could have been used if they had been developed. The A2000 from 1987 could add them internally of course, just like PCs.

Jack had dropped the retail price of the C64 before Gould had forced him out so they were stuck with that maximum price for the C64. Gould was not happy with that price drop, he was quite greedy and the reason ALL Amigas were overpriced.

 

The Amiga 1000/500 Zorro-I side expansion is the first plug and play system AFAIK, you can get all sorts of info about what is plugged into the port via utils like SYSinfo IIRC regardless of whether the program was written before the expansion was designed. 

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On 7/22/2022 at 2:37 AM, Keatah said:

Yes.

 

I had gotten my A1000 from a specialty shop. I really wanted a PC even at that early juncture. But the lure of the color graphics and cheaper price was a huge deciding factor. Had the A1000 been priced higher it might have appealed to a different clientele. But C= was not prepared to behave in a way that would satisfy that bunch.

 

This behavior would mean having a world-wide support network. Doing instead of promising. Having real-world software on the shelf ready to ring up at the cash register and take with you, not vaporous promises like "coming soon" and "in development now". What's a businessman supposed to do? Sit there and watch C= politics hash out trivial nonsense?

 

Yes. I would have liked a 128K C64 rather than a whole different system that felt patched together or felt like 2 different machines exclusive of each other.

 

In the Apple II world, we had several upgraded models that came after the OG Apple II, the II+, the //e, //c, Enhanced //e, //c+, IIgs, and Platinum //e.

 

One upgrade cycle, going from the II+ to the //e, gave us 64K base memory. And a moderately cheap card doubled that to 128K and 80-columns. As a bonus we also got Double HiRes graphics. A standardized 80-column solution that lots of software actually used.

 

We also had a plethora of reasonably priced Z-80 cards to pick from. Most all were interchangeable, with the major differences being on-board RAM options and a few speed/price points. By and large, CP/M on Apple II was a rather straightforward experience that just worked.

 

We also got a 65C02 too, along with MouseText (a simpler version of petscii/atasci). All of this was forward and backward compatible. And because it optional on all but the last models, it didn't break the bank early on.

 

Well not only that. It was a bigger issue starting the system up. No business or professional wants to fart around swapping floppies just to get the system going. Certainly not in the day of the newfangled 10MB HDDs like in the PC. One power-on switch is enough thankyouverymuch!

 

Cost really wasn't an issue. It was the clumsiness and fumbling around. IMHO.

 

Here in the USA the PC had yet to get going for the home user. That would begin changing in a big way in 1989-1992. Important years with faster 386 machines. And soon Windows 3.1 on the upcoming 486 rigs.

I was using a PC (80186, EGA, 20mb HD) in 1986-88 and I already had a 520STM at home before that so I knew the PC wasn't for me at any price, I was interested in pixel art and my two options in my budget were Commodore 128D+GEOS or 520STM+SF354 bundle. I went with the ST because I already knew the C128 design was so kooky the games would all be pretty much identical to C64 games except for the bank switched extra 64k (2mhz CPU had to drop to 1mhz for VIC-II/SID chips to work i.e. the only mode that worked on domestic TVs/video monitors).

 

I had a 486 (25mhz) in Sept 1992 but this was from some tiny advert in a magazine and some cobbled together affair not a High Street retailer branded machine, for families in 1992 it was things like the £799.99-£1099.99 High Street retailer sold Amstrad 80286 14mhz VGA + Adlib type machine which let's face it is utterly crap for all but 3D games. I also got a launch day Amiga 1200 in October 1992. There was zero sophistication in anything the PC did. DOS command line is restrictive and worse than the VIC-20, 8 character file name restriction is also worse than VIC-20, Windows 3.x is horrendous and very unreliable, you can't even find your files without using stupid program manager to browse the disk instead of disk icons on the desktop (dumb!) and to be honest to play Lotus III on PC at 30fps you needed a 486DX2/50, games like Shadow of the Beast, Lotus II, Turrican III, Lionheart would be impossible for any high street PC of the late 80s/early 90s. To play Super Stardust like an Amiga 1200 you needed a 1994 Pentium 120/133mhz PC. This is probably why Amstrad produced the Sega Megadrive/386 PC combination hybrid machine...386 PCs couldn't do scrolling games like an Amiga/SNES/Megadrive/PC Engine. Plus let's not forget you will be pulling your hair out trying to free enough of the 640kb area of RAM by messing about with CONFIG/AUTOEXEC files just to even be able to run some of those DOS games. Horrible machine for home users, truly horrible. 

 

The Amiga scene was far from perfect, only 1% of games were worthy of the memory of Jay Miner/Dave Needle technically speaking, so I checked ALL prospective purchases for free via pirate disks in the post BEFORE spending a penny on games due to clueless idiots rating these stuttering 16 colour Amiga ports as 'must buy!' etc. I did eventually cave in and get a PC Engine used in 1989, a brand new Jap import Megadrive on launch day too. The only game I really played on my 486 PC in the early 90s was F1GP (22 frames per second, it was awesome) and Actua Soccer (although I preferred Int Superstar Soccer on the SNES/MD if I am honest). Can't remember if I had Gametek's Super Street Fighter II Turbo for my 486 or Pentium PC now but SF2 Championship Edition on Megadrive max speed setting...erm neither the SNES or Amiga could do that let alone my 486 VGA PC.

 

PC joysticks were also very pathetic if you ever played arcade style games with a Euromax Zipstik, like those Commodore 'dildo' pack in joysticks Commodore bundled with the C64 console :) I think my Gravis Ultrasound cost as much as my SNES+SF2 bundle to be honest. In the EU the PC won by default, Apple went back to overpriced rubbish after the astonishingly cheap Mac LC475 and Commodore/Atari/Acorn all self destructed from the home/family users point of view and vanished without a trace before Win 95 even came out. Had IBM not insisted on charging £150 for OS/2 Warp owning a PC might have been not too bad....but Windows was, is, and always will be, for losers to be quite frank. Doing a bit of video editing and my Win 10 PC didn't even blue screen when it ran out of memory for Camtasia, it black screened, hard reset the PC with a powercycle and rebooted like a fat kid trying to run a marathon. Windows is atrocious, identical spec PC in disguise Macs cost £800 more...OS X is NOT worth £800, another 'feature' of the modern world.

 

If only Irving Gould had got cancer in 1982....oh what a wonderful world we would live in today :D I hope he is buried with a Commodore 16 forced up his rectal passage, the financial vampire SCUM that he was. Ditto for TI calculator wars initiating TI CEO SCUM. 

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2 hours ago, oky2000 said:

If you remove the savvy Apple marketing for the Mac (that kooky Amiga 1000 advert with naff special effects trying to copy the end scene from 2001 the movie? LOL) from the equation and the lack of industry standard adherence of Amiga (not just OS and apps but who is going to re-train teams of engineers in fault finding/repairing Amiga 1000s?) you have utter failure.

I don't believe the Amiga's lack of popularity in the US had anything to do with servicing. By the time the Amiga was out, PCs (and the techs that worked on them) were moving toward board-level repair. Cards.. Drives.. Memory.. Individual logic was now becoming integrated into "chipsets". And no one needs much education or training to handle that. Chipsets were hideously complex from a component level, but simplified on a manufacturing level. A BlackBox 2BShur. And that mean motherboard replacement if they were failing. Run some diagnostics, test memory, motherboard, HDD, FDD, CPU, FPU, "GPU"..

 

They were even selling diagnostic software for PC in the form of Norton Utilities and CheckIt. At grocery-store-like shops which were everywhere here.

 

To be completely fair, the integration started in earnest with the late 286 boards, made some progress in 386 boards. And practically exploded on the scene with 486 & Pentium. And when you have chipsets that fail, you just throw away the motherboard and get a new one. You could keep your sound and graphics, storage, memory, and everything else. Might even sneak in an upgrade too!

 

2 hours ago, oky2000 said:

The Amiga 1000 is a beautifully built piece of kit to be sure, a joy to use, but a bit overkill when most rival PCs were huge tank like uncouth noisy rubbish anyway.

PCs were large, heavy, reliable, imposing, and full of proper standards respected and desired by businesses. Amiga had none of that. PCs were common everywhere because they could handle real life and do honest work.

 

The architecture was so advanced (yet simple) that it would be the basis for years, for decades, of expansion and growth. PCs grew up in an awesome way. And Windows helped the process along by making advanced MultiMedia be available to everyone.

 

Not only that, but, when running WinUAE, every Amiga is a PC's bitch! Never forget that.

 

2 hours ago, oky2000 said:

I can't comment about the US markets but in the EU the Amiga sold despite all the mistakes of Commodore.

The Amiga did alright in segments/areas in the US where it was actually marketed. Otherwise it was essentially unknown.

 

1 hour ago, oky2000 said:

There was zero sophistication in anything the PC did.

It got the job done. And that is in and of itself is intrinsic sophistication. Not sophistication yapped about by advertisers and cult followings. Or lauded about by demo teams. Because demos are essentially useless diversions.

1 hour ago, oky2000 said:

DOS command line is restrictive and worse than the VIC-20,

Vic-20 doesn't even know what DOS is.

 

1 hour ago, oky2000 said:

8 character file name restriction is also worse than VIC-20,

8.3 kept filenames manageable and meaningful.

 

1 hour ago, oky2000 said:

Windows 3.x is horrendous and very unreliable,

Yet it allowed me to conduct word processing like never before. No GuruMeditation errors. And the errors Windows has (then and now) are much more characterizable and predictable.

1 hour ago, oky2000 said:

you can't even find your files without using stupid program manager to browse the disk instead of disk icons on the desktop (dumb!)

That's ok, put ProgramManager on the desktop. A one-stop shop for all things "disk".

 

1 hour ago, oky2000 said:

and to be honest to play Lotus III on PC at 30fps you needed a 486DX2/50, games like Shadow of the Beast, Lotus II, Turrican III, Lionheart would be impossible for any high street PC of the late 80s/early 90s.

DX2/50 was out summer of 92', that's early 90's to me. Late 80's? No. I'll give you that.

Anyway it doesn't matter because PC performance was (and continues today) growing by leaps and bounds.

 

1 hour ago, oky2000 said:

Plus let's not forget you will be pulling your hair out trying to free enough of the 640kb area of RAM by messing about with CONFIG/AUTOEXEC files just to even be able to run some of those DOS games. Horrible machine for home users, truly horrible.

Yet somehow highly HIGHLY desirable and usable and versatile. With an ecosphere of thousands upon thousands of upgrade & expansion cards. Faster processors coming out every 6 months. Hundreds of new software packages coming out weekly, worldwide. An incredible time to be getting into computers - aside from possibly the first 4-5 years of KIM-1 or Apple II.

 

A PC could be made to any spec you liked. Some expensive, some for little more than cost of e-waste. And thus everybody wanted one. And took the time learn how to use it. That in and of itself was rewarding.

 

1 hour ago, oky2000 said:

but Windows was, is, and always will be, for losers to be quite frank.

Windows is for winners that know what they want. Windows can fit itself into any desired task and git'r done. No fart'n around with obscure, unsupported, and cryptic nonsense. Windows elevates all whom use it to the next level.

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4 hours ago, oky2000 said:

The PC was always going to win, if Commodore wanted to keep the respect of the business users and play in the expensive professional market [in Europe] they should have just gone with their initial Z8000/68000 based 16bit PET project to counter the 8086 PC march in 1983/84 timeline not blow $40m on the king of multimedia/desktop video solutions.

Motorola back in the early 68000 days was still dank and brown and reeking from big government contracts. Brown was the company color. Totally unlike Intel's pleasant blue, or Nvidia's happy greenfields green. Or AMD hotfire red. Blech! BROWN! And it showed in their lack of marketing prowess in things 68000. Let alone production. Whooot!

 

Not sure if the Amiga would have fared better or not if wasn't designed around "genlock" and NTSC video timings.

 

4 hours ago, oky2000 said:

Like I said, Irving Gould only bought the company to spite Jack as they hated each other by 1984. The advantages Amiga brought to users had minimal use in a world that didn't even understand what desktop video/digital darkroom or even sound sampling could do for them. Digi-view and Digi-paint was doing things 24 months earlier would cost you $30,000 to do.

I know all about Digi-View and Digi-Paint, Photon Paint, and Deluxe Paint III. It was both grand and suckful at the same time.

 

Grand because all the colors in the palette. Exceeded CGA/EGA by miles. And there was actual software that worked and allowed me to make real drawings of all sorts.

 

Suckful because getting the finished work out to the newfangled inkjet printers was impossible. Or just sharing it with people that had PCs in business, a difficult thing too. The PCs didn't have the color depth, but they had the resolution and then some. PCs didn't really understand ILBM & IFF, so had to try and convert. Disk formats were still a tricky thing to my green head back then too.

 

Trivia: Snappy! for PC parallel port is very much like Digi-View. Pretty sure its the same guys and philosophy behind it.

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