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[Digiman]

Because to me it was. A500 was a 1 month project for these guys not 12, and these are the designers who could improved things much better than the ECS/AGA delayed chipset surely.

C= West Chester and new man at the helm in 86 got it more wrong than anyone else IMO.

[Franko]

Is this a question, or merely an expression of ones thoughts...

[mfletcher]

Originally Posted by Digiman

Because to me it was. A500 was a 1 month project for these guys not 12, and these are the designers who could improved things much better than the ECS/AGA delayed chipset surely.

C= West Chester and new man at the helm in 86 got it more wrong than anyone else IMO.

Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda. Everyone knows that hindsight is 20/20.

[a1200]

Someones been reading Brian Bagnall's book

Both teams had an immense amount of talent - just think what could have been achieved if they had been working together and the engineers were in charge of what happened to the company!

[EDanaII]

Originally Posted by Digiman

Because to me it was. A500 was a 1 month project for these guys not 12, and these are the designers who could improved things much better than the ECS/AGA delayed chipset surely..

Yep. I think you're correct. To me, it signalled a lack of seriousness towards research and research is exactly what was needed to keep the Amiga ahead of everyone else.

[hazydave]

Originally Posted by Digiman

Because to me it was. A500 was a 1 month project for these guys not 12, and these are the designers who could improved things much better than the ECS/AGA delayed chipset surely.

C= West Chester and new man at the helm in 86 got it more wrong than anyone else IMO.

The only reason the A500 was in West Chester was because the Los Gatos team rejected the "Fat" architecture as unworkable. They were wrong. And you clearly have not the slightest idea of how custom chip development is done, or how long it takes.

The problems with delivering new chips on time was never one of ability... we had in West Chester chip designers every bit as good as those in Los Gatos (and no, that's not me). The problem was high level, and corporate: Commodore spent big money on executive's salaries, not technology.

And yes, "the new guy", Marshall Smith, was useless. But he wasn't running West Chester, he ran Commodore. Had they not closed Los Gatos, the same problems would have existed. Not to mention that Los Gatos didn't even have proper IC CAD systems until C= supplied them.... they were hardly setting any IC design records.

It's also the case that, while the Los Gatos office was closed, the team was not sacked. They were welcome in West Chester. But that did mean leaving California. Of course, actually having been there, I might have a slightly different prespective. But hey, if you think Atari and the Tramiels would have done better.... my advice: find some less mind-altering drugs. Or ask some of my good friends from Los Gatos Amiga how the "Handy" was treated at Atari.

[EDanaII]

Not to say that you are wrong, Dave, because I don't think you are and LORD knows you're knowledge of both Commodore and hardware vastly outstrips mine, but... you don't really think that the loss of the Los Gatos team was ever a good idea, do you?

To me, the loss of the Los Gatos team was like Queen Isabella dumping Columbus for a skilled captain without the knowledge of the trade winds. The new captain might know how to manage his ship, but that doesn't mean he has the wherewithall to complete the voyage to the Americas.

I don't say this to lessen the contributions of yourself or the rest of the West Chester team, but the Los Gatos Team had not only intimate knowledge of the product but the vision for where it was to go, not to mention it was "their baby."

In normal business situations like this, most businesses _bend over backwards_ to keep their prime players around, including accomodating them from across the country.

From my -- admittedly less knowledgable point of view -- this seems to reflect that Commodore was more interested in applying the C64 model inspired by Tramiel to the Amiga than the cutting-edge hardware model that it deserved. They should have been applying a premium amount of money to keep their edge over the competition and this should have included sucking up to the Los Gatos team by whatever means necessary.

But, once again, I admit limitted knowledge on the subject.

[UncleSpam]

Commodore made a fundamental mistake when they decided to go low end.

They earned a "game machine" reputation, which, long-term, had no legs to stand on.

From this point of view Chuck Peddle was correct... keep the business side growing while developing the low end.

At an early stage, this might have made a difference against IBM and future clones, but that's looking back at things...

My $.02...

[Khephren]

Keeping the golden egg, and throwing out the goose is never a good idea.
Still, from what I remember, at least commodore kept them on for a while, and was willing to let them move to west chester. Jack Tramiel only wanted the design, not the team.

Dave points out that "we had in West Chester chip designers every bit as good as those in Los Gatos". Which is interesting, what would commodores plans have been if the Amiga had fallen through, what would the west chester guys have produced?

[psxphill]

Originally Posted by hazydave

The only reason the A500 was in West Chester was because the Los Gatos team rejected the "Fat" architecture as unworkable. They were wrong. And you clearly have not the slightest idea of how custom chip development is done, or how long it takes.

I've been playing with an A2000 recently and one thing I've been pondering is why the FAT agnus wasn't always 1mb chip ram, rather than 512k chip + c00000.

Was the FAT agnus a copy and paste of the thin agnus (plus stuff) and it just took time to extend the dma with extra address lines?

[Amiga_Nut]

I would have to agree with OP.

Dave Haynie..... "we had in West Chester chip designers every bit as good as those in Los Gatos"

If this is the case why was there zero improvement in useful aspects of OCS chipset in 1985-1991. As far as I can see all they added was 1mb Chip ram then 2mb (this can be useful yes especially 1mb) but hey Shadow of the Beast runs in 512kb doesn't it?
Other than that we got some crazy 4 colour screen modes and double PAL etc. I see no evidence of any attempt to improve parallax scrolling rather than the crippled 2x 8 colour dual playfield mode or 64 usable colours on screen or even a speeded up EHB mode to make it usable.

And also if this is true why was Commodore's answer to Atari ST the C128? Hardly Amiga 1000 chipset levels of genius? Let's face it if Commodore or Atari had not got hold of Amiga chipset then of the two machines which would people have bought for 400 bucks? Exactly! +4 was nothing special, the C128 made hardly any improvements to 1982 C64 as a games machine hell it couldn't even run VIC-II @ 2mhz in 128 mode and 2mhz compatible VDC had no sprites and no extra colours after 4 years etc.

Amiga was what stopped C= going bust after JT left, they were clueless beyond belief and projects that should have been canned made it into production.

To me it looks like the chip designers left at Commodore would have to reverse engineer the stuff, and they didn't get very far. And way before VGA 386/486 PC there were a few machines with 128 or 256 colours on screen around the time of A2000/500 so the writing was on the wall and we all know this is where we had to be (more than 32 colours on screen and better parallax) to compete with future machines.

The original designers came up with the following chipsets....

Ranger
Lynx
3DO

Which apart from VIC-II and SID Commodore engineers never really reached that level of technical superiority ever again really.

+4/C16 nothing special
C128 chipset less capable than similarly priced Atari ST with no custom chipset.

[mingle]

What a lot of people seem to forget is that big corporations like Commodore were/are not run by the engineers - it's marketing and the accounts departments that have the final say.

I know - I've been there!

I'm sure if the CBM engineers were given free reign things would be very different today...

I'm also pretty sure that Dave Haynie knows what he's talking about...

Mike.

[bloodline]

I think what Dave is pointing out is that the ideas and expertise were there to develop the Amiga chipset (and I can believe that), the senior management were not keen to spend money on any new "Big Chips", so the WC team had to make inexpensive incremental upgrades to the chipset they had rather than anything new and exciting.

Having worked in a large organisation I know full well how good ideas and exciting new directions can be killed off by poor management.

It is my assessment of the situation, that the C= engineers did the best they could with the resources they had in a company with little vision and poor leadership. The tech industry moved too quickly for the Commodore, Atari and even the Apple management of the time could understand.

[Franko]

Hmmm... methinks I'll let Toyah sum it up for me...

[Amiga_Nut]

I can't argue with that, and yes the ultimate blame does lay with with Commodore management. However I can't see any evidence from products outside the C64 and A1000 chipset that anything as good would ever happen again based on products/prototypes sold.

Cost/performance is the issue not ultimate performance too sure. Case in point, how difficult would it have been to put two Paula chips on the A4000/3000 motherboard for 8 channel sound? Given the price of these machines it should have been done (well a new sound chip to be honest but dual Paula would have been a cheap fix).

Hell working C65 prototype chipset had 256/4096 colours in 320x200 and pre-dated AGA didn't it?