bobsmith wrote on 2024-03-21, 13:06:

I've noticed the Amiga fascination is most common in Western Europeans. Why was the Amiga not popular in the US or other countries? Some parts of the Amiga culture that started there and evolved beyond it like trackers got pretty popular here at least in terms of nerd crowds, but I've never heard or read of the Amiga being popular in the US.

This is a more involved question than you likely realize, but the answer can be more or less summed up this way:

Different leadership between commodore usa, and commodore europe.

More specifically (but not completely the whole story, again, 'it's complicated'), commodore USA wanted to sell the Amiga line as high end graphics workstations to business customers, viewing the home computer market to be saturated; this would not be 'entirely' incorrect, given that a great many offerings existed in that market, and it was unsafe as a corporate investment strategy.

Meanwhile in Europe, the EU kids were being sold Amigas as high powered home computers, with extensive MIDI, Stereo sound mixing, videosync generation, lots of colors, and many other 'way ahead of their time' perks, with 'Games!' Being a hot selling point, coupled with europe's 'home videogame coding boom'.

But the short end of the stick, is that Amiga did not take off in the consumer space for the same reason Sun Workstations didn't.

They were not marketed to home users, and were instead marketed to business users for AV applications.

'home videogame coding boom'

Ok, perhaps I shouldn't reply to every post here, but this one is something I can relate to.
Here in Europe, quite a few coders had a home computer background and applied things learned to their work in video game industry.

Consoles like the Segas and Nintendos of the time were being based on Z80, 6502 and m68k systems.
Same goes for the PSG and FM chips. That's why these "euro games" on the NES had such a different sound.

The musician working on the Smurfs game, for example, did a very good job.
The title didn't sound like typical NES game, as found in the states.

There was no or less MIDI being involved in composing (MIDI was being popular in the US, I heard),
the PSG sound chips tunes were being composed with a tracker software, rather.

Similarily, the Japanese were very good at making FM sound, I believe.
If they had gotten their hands on our western AdLib Music Synthesizer Card (OPL2), it would have sounded stellar.

Last, but not least, there's something that I think is being forgotten.
Some coders from the home computer era often say that the 80s were the golden age and that the 90s ended it.

I think that's not entirely true. Bed room programmers and one-man companies continued to exist in the 90s.
They wrote shareware titles, which got their way on CD-ROMs, online services and BBSes.

Especially on DOS/Windows 3, there was a lot going on, still.
You could register software for a little fee and in return get the full software package (manual, disks, goodies) either by that small company or by the author himself.

But of course, PC or WinTel was the enemey of the time, so it doesn't count, right ? 😉
That's at least how it feels, when generation C64 glorifies the 80s.

-
Maybe that's also the reason as to why the A2286 bridgeboard wasn't feature-complete, maybe?
On one hand, Commodore tried to make the Amiga shine, while simultanously it tried to sell PC comaptibles.

That's kind of shizophrenic or contradictional, I think.
Because, many of the Commodore PCs had an "AGA" graphics card, which was Hercules, CGA and Plantronics compatible.
The own bridgeboard series, however, didn't have these features.

Was this on done on purpose or just because of incompetence. As often being told, Commodore had lost most of its engineers.
But building a bridgeboard isn't that complicated. About any IT company could have done that.

Oh yes, the western soundcard, made with a Japanese Yamaha chip in Singapore.

Jo did you write this when half asleep or are you getting AI to write your posts again?

Returning to the 'Games!' Angle...

The massive market implosion of Atari (after an infamously rushed 2600 game that was waay over-invested caused an investor speculation panic, by being an absolute bomb) meant that the US market was 'Averse' to selling 'Game Systems'.

This persisted for quite some time, and stayed that way until investors were placated by Nintendo, which proudly proclaimed their CIC/NES10 lockout chip would prevent a massive release of low quality games from undermining consumer expectations, and would help assure a marketable and high quality platform and experience. (Which is what the 'Nintendo Seal of Approval' quality sticker was all about.)

This is about the same time window in which Commodore USA and Texas Instruments were trying to pricewar themselves into extinction, (approx 1985 ish) and 'boxy, "big business" machines' tried STUDIOUSLY to distance themselves from being 'toys'.

This is among the reasons Commodore USA did not market Amiga like its EU counterpart did ('games' being toxic to VC, locked in a costly pricewar with a rival for the lower-cost home PC market with TI, IBM's XT was 'meant for grown up business stuff!', etc.)

Trying to sell Amiga in a different market segment (video editing/publishing) makes a lot more sense, given this environment.

Those problems did not exist in the EU market.

Consumers saw a very good, feature-rich home PC, the EU matket had a flowering cottage game industry (kids got computers for the first time, realized they could make stuff 'just as good, or better!' Than commercial stuff from the US, AND DID SO) and the kids got a lot of bang for that admittedly pricy buck.

BitWrangler wrote on 2024-03-22, 13:39:

Oh yes, the western soundcard, made with a Japanese Yamaha chip in Singapore.

Jo did you write this when half asleep or are you getting AI to write your posts again?

that person writes the wildest revisionist history takes

^*Ahem* Where I live, to claim that someone is writing “revisionist history” is not exactly a small accusation.
Sources or concrete examples for this assumption are actually the least that should be mentioned.
If it is merely a personal opinion, it has to be marked as such. No offense, though. :)

Edit: Just checked. There are two terms to this matter, it seems.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_revisionism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_negationism

The first one says "In historiography, historical revisionism is the reinterpretation of a historical account",
while the second one is about "Historical negationism,[2][3] also called historical denialism, is falsification[4][5] or distortion of the historical record.
It should not be conflated with historical revisionism, a broader term that extends to newly evidenced, fairly reasoned academic reinterpretations of history [..]"

I can agree on the first one, ie, trying to interprete things by examining existing evidences and sources (magazines, photos etc).
That's what most of us do, I suppose, if we dig through computing history or try share our own memories of nerd/geek culture.
Especially the BBS scene is/was interesting I think. I always wondered how things were in other countries around the globe at the time.

Edit: That being said, the topic as such is spot on! Kudos. AIs and the source materials they learn from are an challenge to society.
Especially in conjunction with meme culture, political correctness and such things. AIs don't 'understand' it and thus make false assumptions easily.
These things make preserving historical materials, such as digital media/physical media even more important these days.

BitWrangler wrote on 2024-03-22, 13:39:

Oh yes, the western soundcard, made with a Japanese Yamaha chip in Singapore.

Jo did you write this when half asleep or are you getting AI to write your posts again?

Yes and no. :D

I meant to say that FM sound technology was being very successful in Japan.
Whereas in Europe/US/Australia etc. most home computers had PSGs (C64's SID, Apple II Mocking Board etc) or simple PC speakers (early Sharp MZ, Commodore PET).
FM took a while to find its way over here. The Sega Genesis/MegaDrive was a notable console to feature FM; the console was derived from arcade hardware (Sega System 16)

There had been very capable composers In Japan that created music that didn't sound like a typical AdLib tune
or a random song played back trough the MIDI-based IBM Music Feature card:
Sierra On-Line, an once famous US-based pioneer in western game development wasn't exactly great at composing songs for FM hardware.
The songs didn't sound nearly as good as they did on PSG (Tandy 3-voice) or Roland's LA Synthesizers.

Or let's take consoles. I also recall that later models of the Japanese Master System had an FM chip, while the international release had the basic PSG only.
Outrun and Phantasy Star 1 for the Sega Master System supported the FM chip, if it was being installed / retro-fitted to a foreign console.

https://segaretro.org/FM_Sound_Unit
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tiMrybmQaE

Other Japanese platforms like the Sharp X68000 (YM2151), FM-7 (YM2203), PC-98 (YM2608, YMF288 etc), PC-88 (YM2203) had adopted FM sound chips during mid-late 80s.
Some platforms had started out with an AY-3-8910 (PSG), as well. MSX has supported FM (OPLL, OPL4) as well, but that was a bit later, I think.

Edit: About the example with the NES and that Infogrames title (Smurfs)..
The composer apparently was Alberto Jose Gonzales, which wasn't an unknown figure at the time.
He composed a few other fine musical titles, too.

Here's the Smurfs OST, to give an idea what I meant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pDlDVctPRo
It doesn't sound like your typical US production, I think.

Edit: About the term "western xyz" - it's not my creation. To what I read online, from Japanese point of view everything from Europe/USA/Australia/UK etc. is "western".
To my understanding there's no differentiation being made, really. To them, these nations/places are all same, pretty much.
Probably because the similarities in culture and language, not sure. Speaking under correction.

Edit: "Oh yes, the western soundcard, made with a Japanese Yamaha chip in Singapore."

This night, I had to think about this again for some reason. Something didn't feel right..
Singapore - that was home of Creative Labs, right?
To what I know it originally created the Creative Music System (C/MS) aka Game Blaster based on 2x SAA1099 PSGs. The Sound Blaster appeared later on.
In 1987, the Creative Music System was the rival to Ad Lib Music Synthesizer Card (ALMMC ALMSC).
Ad Lib Inc. by contrast was from Canada (or "Canadia" as some may prefer).

wierd_w wrote on 2024-03-22, 15:22:

Returning to the 'Games!' Angle... […]
Show full quote

Returning to the 'Games!' Angle...

The massive market implosion of Atari (after an infamously rushed 2600 game that was waay over-invested caused an investor speculation panic, by being an absolute bomb) meant that the US market was 'Averse' to selling 'Game Systems'.

This persisted for quite some time, and stayed that way until investors were placated by Nintendo, which proudly proclaimed their CIC/NES10 lockout chip would prevent a massive release of low quality games from undermining consumer expectations, and would help assure a marketable and high quality platform and experience. (Which is what the 'Nintendo Seal of Approval' quality sticker was all about.)

This is about the same time window in which Commodore USA and Texas Instruments were trying to pricewar themselves into extinction, (approx 1985 ish) and 'boxy, "big business" machines' tried STUDIOUSLY to distance themselves from being 'toys'.

This is among the reasons Commodore USA did not market Amiga like its EU counterpart did ('games' being toxic to VC, locked in a costly pricewar with a rival for the lower-cost home PC market with TI, IBM's XT was 'meant for grown up business stuff!', etc.)

Trying to sell Amiga in a different market segment (video editing/publishing) makes a lot more sense, given this environment.

Those problems did not exist in the EU market.

Consumers saw a very good, feature-rich home PC, the EU matket had a flowering cottage game industry (kids got computers for the first time, realized they could make stuff 'just as good, or better!' Than commercial stuff from the US, AND DID SO) and the kids got a lot of bang for that admittedly pricy buck.

I think that might sum it up pretty well.

BitWrangler also said that the "Amiga peaked earlier in the US, prior to mass web use and AGA", which I think fits the picture.
In older US media from before ~1990, the Amiga still seems to be mentioned, at some point.
For example, not long ago I spotted an A1000 in an rerun of an episode of "Miami Vice", an 80s show.
The Amiga was sitting on a desktop, displaying the blue/white workbench. The episode was from, I don't know, 1985/86?

Meanwhile here in Europe ('87+), the A500 was often being mentioned in press and on TV.
It was the equivalent to the C64 in terms of popularity, I suppose.

I guess that's also why parents were willing to buy their kids an pricey Amiga 500.
Commodore as a company must have felt like part of the family already (like AEG, Volkswagen, Siemens or Bosch etc in case of Germany).
Probably because parents or family members had gotten accustomed to a PET, VC20 or C64 years before already.

But of course, that bed room computer was nothing someone could be using in office.
Not because of technical reasons, but because of saving someones face.
It wasn't a serious piece of office equipment, like the Amiga A1000 or later on, the A2000 was.

Using it in an office of a reputable company would be the computer equivalent
to an employee wearing an open Hawaiian shirt, a hairy chest, shorts and sandals.
That simply wasn't acceptable. Not in the prudish office structures of the 80s.

And that was the dilemma really, I'm afraid. Or one of it, I suppose.
The A500 was widely available and cheap, but it had the image (reputation) of a toy computer.
Which is kind of sad, because A500/A2000 were siblings on an electric level. They had shared same Workbench disk set, for example.

And the A1000 was oudated/nolonger available by late 80s, leaving the expensive A2000 to be the only remaining alternative.
Not that it was bad somehow, it even had a 32-Bit processor slot that could be used to get rid of several bottle necks (quick memory, 68020 or 68030 CPU and FPUs).

If there had been a cost-reduced A500 motherboard in an A1000 chassis.. Who knows?
It perhaps would have sold as an user-friendly Turbo XT alternative, still.
The Commodore 128D had gotten the same chassis, after all and it wasn't bad.

And OCS and ECS already had supported higher resolution modes than what AGA had to offer later on.
On machines running in PAL mode, at least.

"Perhaps the most well known graphics mode of the Original Chip Set was the HAM mode,
which enabled the display of up to 4096 colours at once on the screen in up to 368 x 482 (NTSC) or 368 x 580 (PAL) resolution.
This screen mode is also known as HAM6, to differentiate it from the HAM8 mode of the AGA Machines. The way HAM6 modes work is somewhat complex."
Source: https://theamigamuseum.com/the-hardware/the-a … -graphic-modes/

On desktop (non-HAM modes) the situation was similiar:

"HiRes
640×200 @ 60Hz (NTSC)
640×256 @ 50Hz (PAL)
12 bit color depth (4096 colors)
up to 16 colors

HiRes Laced
640×400 @ 60Hz (NTSC)
640×512 @ 50Hz (PAL)
12 bit color depth (4096 colors)
up to 16 colors"

Sources: https://amiga.lychesis.net/articles/ScreenModes.html

On a 100Hz TV or green monitor with afterglow, the flickering was bearable, I suppose.
If a flicker-fixer circuit was being available, even more so.
By mid-late 80s, multisync monitors became more common place in general, I believe.

So either way, it was still better than an Turbo XT with CGA graphics (640x200 mono vs 640x256 16 col).
Rivaling Hercules graphics was still a challenge for the Amiga, though. Hercules even had rivaled VGA for while, still.
The many grayscales (mono screen, via RCA output) might have helped a bit to smoothen the display, however.

Anyway, the Amiga also was on decline here in Europe after 1990s, I think.
(Edit: Or rather, Western Europe. Can't speak for whole Europe, of course. That's why I'm limiting myself to my place mostly here.)
But not as a games computer (there were lots of new games being released still; hardware upgrades, too!), but as an application platform.

In the 1980s, the Amiga was still seen as a general purpose computer, just like the Atari ST (-> Calamus and DTP).
There were serious people with serious hobbies/interests who wrote applications for the platform - as if it was an Atari ST, IBM PC or Mac.
Things not related to fun, games or entertainment. Okay, art and music maybe, yes, though. Everyone loved fractals, too! 😁

But somewhen shortly after 1990s this had ended or changed. Not sure how to put it into words.. Edit: Or should I've said "fell out of fashion", rather?
If we look at books about astronomy, telecommunications (fax software, terminal programs, packet radio etc) or DTP, CAM/CAD programs, I mean.
All those seemingly "boring" programs or productivity software (databases, networking software, accounting sofware etc) went away on Amiga.

There were less and less books that did cover the Amiga as a tool.
Things like electronic construction sets or robot arms previously had supported computer interfaces on Apple II, C64/128, PC, Mac, Amiga etc.
After 1990, merely the IBM PC and to a degree, the Macintosh saw continued support in this category.

But on Amiga? Most of these things never had seen Kick/Workbench 2.0 or higher.
From my point of view, the golden age for applications was Amiga OS 1.x (Kick/WB 1.x) thus.

Personally, I noticed this decline with a book called "Highlight Amiga", which was a fine raytracing book.
The first book from about ~1990 still had covered the Amiga, while subsequent releases were moving to PC.
First on DOS w/ (S)VGA graphics, then on Windows 3.x and finally Windows NT.
The author(s) kept track with technological development of the time, I think.

PS: There's also an 80s episode about the A1000 running Deluxe Paint..
Commodore Amiga 1000 ZDF Computer Corner Electronic Arts
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6ahBmAygOE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0nkPLVBYVg

Some more games, C64 and A1000 (also has footage of GEOS 1.2):
Computerzeit 1986 Commodore 64 / Amiga Spiele Teil II
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_glByI9xQ8A

Edit: Sorry for the long posting. It's night time in my place and these things got me thinking.
I hope that's okay. I didn't mean to alter history, or something. These are just some thoughts, after all. 😅

Edit: Update. Searched the web and found some more information.

[..] The C64 was still selling like crazy in 1990, while the A500 had dropped below the 1000 DM/350 UKP mark by then. Between these two, there was simply no space for another machine. The C128 had been discontinued for that very reason, despite selling better than the A500.

Introducing another machine between these two would have just hurt sales of the existing two options. It would have made an A500 look to expensive or the C64 to slow. Not to mention that a third incompatible platform would have been extremely stupid, especially as late as 1990.[..]

Source: https://forum.amiga.org/index.php?PHPSESSID=2 … 02556#msg702556

That's an interesting bit of information. Haven't looked at it this way.
So Commodore wasn't being able to produce another computer for serious users?