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[Amiga_Nut]

What it says on the tin really, some of us old enough had a C64 before an Amiga and it was brand loyalty to Commodore not the compatibility of the machine that led us to Amiga. The two are totally incompatible and have nothing technically in common but at the same time spiritually are successors to each other. After all C64 compatibility didn't make the C128 anywhere near a viable purchase....they were clinging on to the old technology too much.

So my question is this.....it's 1992....Commodore launch a radical new machine for the 4th time in their history totally incompatible with Amiga BUT absolutely a new paradigm in price performance that put it on par with Amiga 1000 vs PC-AT & original Macintosh.

Would you have bought it if it meant you could play Doom on a £300 machine as well as a Pentium 75mhz PC costing £1500 in 1994 OR would you have not bought it because you can't run your Amiga games on it?

Me personally, no offence, I wouldn't give a crap. If it was as revolutionary as the A1000 I couldn't have cared less if it was Amiga compatible or not, and better that than the luke warm upgrade that was AGA in 4000/1200/CD32.

The A1200 is to the A500 what the C128 is to the C64.

See what I am getting at?

[bloodline]

My software investment was too large to simply dump, plus I would have struggled to afford anything more than £300 when I was 13...

[Pentad]

It would have been a disaster for Commodore to release a computer that was completely incompatible with the Amiga by that time. Users were beginning to jump ship to IBM by that point so if they were going to loose their software investment anyway, I don't think they would have stuck with Commodore.

Having said all of that, pondering how disastrous that would have been, I find myself forced to say that I'm sure if Commodore would have been better off financially they would have tried something like this...

Plus/4
C65
C16

Empirical evidence my friends...

Cheers!
-P

[pwermonger]

They did release machines around that time frame that were incompatible with Amiga, PC clones including laptops. I didn't buy any of them and as long as there were decent Amigas I wouldn't have bought anything that wasn't Amiga compatible at the time.

I moved from C64 to 128 when it died to Amiga 500 to 2000 to 1200 then to Windows PC when the Pentium 3 made it at least start to work as well and games to play decently.

[commodorejohn]

Originally Posted by pwermonger

They did release machines around that time frame that were incompatible with Amiga, PC clones including laptops.

Yeah, but the question was about an Amiga-incompatible system that was a step forward. Commodore's PC clones were basically just okay, nothing special even by PC standards.

[Digiman]

The A1200 and A4000 cost a lot of development time and the chipset took up a lot of space because they were trying to keep things compatible IMO.

C128 sold badly and wasn't a huge improvement, ditto A1200. So I get the point.

If Commodore had produced a machine with radically new technology that allowed triple parallax 256 colour screens with 256 hardware sprites with realtime scaling and rotation and 8 channel 16bit audio with realtime echo/reverb/modulation/filtering then YES.

I love my Amiga, but owning a C64 and Amiga was not a problem. Owning machine X + Amiga + C64 again not a problem.

Trouble is none of the OCS designers were in house employees ditto C64s VIC2 and SID designers. Maybe if they had ended up with the 3DO or Flair2 chip set rivals secured this would have been their 3rd wonder machine.

[Khephren]

can't say yes or no to this. It's about software support for me. will if get imagine, imageFX, lightwave?
what's the game publisher support? what's the OS like ,price? etc. Otherwise your left with a Sam Coupe or Acorn Archimedes.

[Digiman]

Originally Posted by commodorejohn

Yeah, but the question was about an Amiga-incompatible system that was a step forward. Commodore's PC clones were basically just okay, nothing special even by PC standards.

PCs were useless machines in 1992, even a 80486 with ISA bus VGA and Soundblaster could barely replicate A500 games from 1986 apart from 256 colours on screen....until they moved *puke*

[dammy]

Originally Posted by bloodline

My software investment was too large to simply dump, plus I would have struggled to afford anything more than £300 when I was 13...

There is no reason to have thrown out your Amiga just because you bought a second system.

I left Apple to Amiga because the Amiga was amazing. I don't see a reason why I wouldn't have done the same had C= went to a next generation. I will point out the differences and the wake it caused when C= went AGA. Say C= went dual Sparc CPU system with a SMP/MP OS which broke 3.1 API to hell and back, I'd buy it without question because it would be a major evolutionary step by C=. TBH, I would have expected C= to take massive jumps like the Vic20/C64 to Amiga on a semi-regular basis, technology permitting and not be chained to the grave.

One of the reasons why C= failed is because C= failed to take those evolutionary steps. Even if C= went with Intel based Amigas, they could have gotten away with forcing the slightly slower 486s they had sitting in warehouses to the Amiga (called it Amiga 1486 for AIO design) while they bought the next slightly faster 486s for their Window and big Amiga boxes to maintain competitive sales. Add in the next generation Amiga gfx was going to be PCI, just produce a Windows driver for it, instant money maker in both computer worlds.

[bloodline]

@dammy

I would have to have sold my Amiga to help fund the purchase of the new machine. Don't forget I was 13 in '93!

I am also trying to put my mind into te frameset that I ha back then... I think I would have struggled to justify jumping to a new platform with all my games and applications, plus most evenings I spent writing little programs... I was too invested in the Amiga platform to jump... I didn't jump until 2000!!!

[Amiga_Nut]

I kept my C64 for years after I blagged an A1000 so made no difference to me. The point is half the reason AGA was luke warm was because it was a limited project with hands tied behind their backs forced to keep Amiga compatibility.

Point is if you had a super powerful machine it would have prevented you from going to 3DO/Jaguar/Sega/Nintendo etc. IBM was not the rival to the A1200/CD32 low end of the market no way. C64 wasn't rivalled by IBM PC in the CGA XT days either. OK A4000/030 yes but there simply wasn't a PC cheap enough in most of 93, we are talking A1200 vs games console for games playing mass market.

If you want to draw/write/program things keep your Amiga sure.

[dammy]

Originally Posted by bloodline

@dammy

I would have to have sold my Amiga to help fund the purchase of the new machine. Don't forget I was 13 in '93!

The poll said "would" and not "could." Therefore you can ignore the financial aspect of buying a new system. I had my Apple for awhile after I got the A500, I see no reason why I would have dumped it immediately after buying a new Uber Amiga if it wasn't backward compatible.

[persia]

1993 had me pretty much in the MS camp. I would have loved an alternative, but for me that was 7 years away with OS X....

[Motormouth]

Originally Posted by bloodline

@dammy

I would have to have sold my Amiga to help fund the purchase of the new machine. Don't forget I was 13 in '93!

I am also trying to put my mind into te frameset that I ha back then... I think I would have struggled to justify jumping to a new platform with all my games and applications, plus most evenings I spent writing little programs... I was too invested in the Amiga platform to jump... I didn't jump until 2000!!!

You were 13. Man, I am feeling old........
I though you might be older.
Your avatar picture reminds me of what some of the British New Wave Rock Stars from back in the early 80's dressed like.

[bloodline]

Originally Posted by Motormouth

You were 13. Man, I am feeling old........
I though you might be older.
Your avatar picture reminds me of what some of the British New Wave Rock Stars from back in the early 80's dressed like.

Yeah, we were part of a new "new wave" it didn't take

Actually the Acorn Archimedies is basically the best Commodore could have done at the time and we can see how well it worked out for Acorn...

Once a computer hits mass market, software support is vital... The Amiga, Mac and IBM-PC were all trading on software by the mid 90's .)