.. but EISA was a true, 99% compatible successor to ISA and the most "open" of them. It was made by a group, the Gang of Nine.
VL-Bus had its electrical issues and PCI was owned by Intel (also, in practice, it was non-existant in the early 90s).
By comparison, EISA cards were usually of higher quality, available and contained matured chips.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_Indust … rd_Architecture

By the way, theoretical transfer speed isn't everything. A good bus design has little overhead and a quick response time (latency).
On paper, PCI promised high speeds, yes, but depending on the implementation barely reached half of it in practice.. 😉
Kind of reminds me of USB 2.0, which was a lame duck, too.

In which way are Zorro II and Zorro III superior ? On the physical side, I mean.

Auto-config was neat, seriously, but that was done by Amiga OS and could have worked on any bus.
In fact, there's something that was missed. If they were putting their hearts into it,
they could have stored the device drivers on the cards themselves (in an ROM chip), as well.
Ideally, these drivers would have used some sort of P-Code instead of machine language.
That way, they would have had worked among different CPU generations.

Zorro II seems to have similar specs like ISA, just a bit slower. That's what it was designed for (ISA), I suppose.
And Zorro III uses multi-plexing, which isn't really that ingenious, IMHO. The 8088 already did that.
Reminds me of 7-segment displays, too. If connected the cheap way (multi-plexed) they do flicker a lot.

Edit: I'm afraid there's a misunderstanding. 😅
I ddidnt mean that tth Amiga's Zorro bus itself should have been replaced by EISA..
I meant the ISA portion behind it (can hold EISA/ISA/XT bus cards) could have been upgraded to EISA.

I think it would have been nice if Commodore did sell upgrades for the Amiga 2000's Zorro/ISA backplane (or rather, logic board).
As a semi drop-in replacement (if chips were socketed.)

These new backplanes would have had Zorro II/III and EISA connectors.
Because, I think, EISA didn't require a very long bus slot (as VESA's VLB did).
For adding VLB in the same way, the Amiga 2000 's chassis and motherboard were too small and tight (see pic).
But that's not the case with EISA slot - it had the same dimensions as the Zorro II/ISA connectors.

In fact surplus EISA connectors were still used in the late 90s/early 2000s.
Set-Top boxes like the Surfstation JNT used them for combined ISA/PCI backplanes.

That way, the Amiga owner could have kept the existing Zorro II/ISA bridgeboards
and PC emulator boards, withoutany advantages or disadvantages.

But if more performances was needed, the lower row (EISA part) of the edge connector could have been used by hardware that supports it.
Or which did find it useful (EISA devices used IDs and config files on floppies).
(Edit: PC emulator boards with EISA support could have had contained an internal database with a selection of popular config file data.
This approach could have been much more conveniant than on a real PC.)

Or in simple words, the native, 32-Bit component of EISA could have been used in a special way (if needed, I'm just a layman).

Or EISA could have been used as a reason to backport Zorro III to the A1500/2000 platform.
With EISA, there technically was a nice companion to interface with and both the classics would have been fully 32-Bit (slot wise).

Anyway, this was just a Gedankenexperiment (what if). There also was Microchannel, too. In both 16 and 32-Bit flavour. 😉

Edit: Typos fixed. Sorry for that, was using a smartphone before.

Jo22 wrote on 2021-04-23, 14:42:

Auto-config was neat, seriously, but that was done by Amiga OS and could have worked on any bus. In fact, there's something that […]
Show full quote

Auto-config was neat, seriously, but that was done by Amiga OS and could have worked on any bus.
In fact, there's something that was missed. If they were putting their hearts into it,
they could have stored the device drivers on the cards themselves (in an ROM chip), as well.
Ideally, these drivers would have used some sort of P-Code instead of machine language.
That way, they would have had worked among different CPU generations.

The RISC OS platform did that 😀

Jo22 wrote on 2021-04-23, 14:42:

In which way are Zorro II and Zorro III superior ? On the physical side, I mean.

This... (from the inventor of Zorro-II and Zorro-III him self)

I tend to believe what is written in the mail. That the only superiour bus to Zorro-II and Zorro-III at that time was PCI.
EISA is the answer to Zorro-II and then he made Zorro-III even better. Yes. EISA was the answer to Zorro-II and not the other way around.
And Zorro-II is superiour to EISA. Does EISA automatically configure and assign resources?
Both Zorro-II and EISA does roughly 20mb/s. So on that point, they are equal.

So the question remains... Why implement something inferiour, make autoconfig run on it, and end up with the same speed?
And then came PCI. Even Haynie said that it was better than Zorro-III.
Sure there were MCA, however would IBM let Commodore implement Autoconfig in MCA, and use MCA without license fee?

Jo22 wrote on 2021-04-23, 14:42:

Auto-config was neat, seriously, but that was done by Amiga OS

Not by the entire OS. The entire OS is Kickstart and Workbench. Autoconf is done during boot, and is something that the Kickstart does.
More accurate. The kickstart tell the card or device to autoconfigure and then it does from the information stored in the card it self.

brostenen wrote on 2021-04-23, 21:39:

This... (from the inventor of Zorro-II and Zorro-III him self) […]
Show full quote

Jo22 wrote on 2021-04-23, 14:42:

In which way are Zorro II and Zorro III superior ? On the physical side, I mean.

This... (from the inventor of Zorro-II and Zorro-III him self)

I tend to believe what is written in the mail. That the only superiour bus to Zorro-II and Zorro-III at that time was PCI.
EISA is the answer to Zorro-II and then he made Zorro-III even better. Yes. EISA was the answer to Zorro-II and not the other way around.
And Zorro-II is superiour to EISA. Does EISA automatically configure and assign resources?
Both Zorro-II and EISA does roughly 20mb/s. So on that point, they are equal.

So the question remains... Why implement something inferiour, make autoconfig run on it, and end up with the same speed?
And then came PCI. Even Haynie said that it was better than Zorro-III.
Sure there were MCA, however would IBM let Commodore implement Autoconfig in MCA, and use MCA without license fee?

actually EISA was a stopgap because the industry didnt want to may MCA royalties to IBM so they made ISA into 32bit and cribbed some from MCA.

Zorro is nothing more than the native 68k cpu bus. Commodores bus mastering was always a shitshow even up to the A4K it had issues (rumour is Dave is going to spin a new revision chip being paid for by cloanto or whoever the fuck owns the ip right now because bus mastering dma is busted).

EISA was not a response to Zorro II. Zorro I was 68k, Zorro II was 68020, Zorro III was basically 68030+

megatron-uk wrote on 2021-04-23, 15:06:

Jo22 wrote on 2021-04-23, 14:42:

Auto-config was neat, seriously, but that was done by Amiga OS and could have worked on any bus. In fact, there's something that […]
Show full quote

Auto-config was neat, seriously, but that was done by Amiga OS and could have worked on any bus.
In fact, there's something that was missed. If they were putting their hearts into it,
they could have stored the device drivers on the cards themselves (in an ROM chip), as well.
Ideally, these drivers would have used some sort of P-Code instead of machine language.
That way, they would have had worked among different CPU generations.

The RISC OS platform did that 😀

That's cool, I didn't know that! 😎
So far, I've only run RISC OS myself on a Raspberry Pi.

The OS is very interesting, makes me kind of wish that Amiga and the Acorns merged their technology.
The outcome surely would have been very interesting!

BloodyCactus wrote on 2021-04-24, 00:54:

actually EISA was a stopgap because the industry didnt want to may MCA royalties to IBM so they made ISA into 32bit and cribbed […]
Show full quote

brostenen wrote on 2021-04-23, 21:39:

This... (from the inventor of Zorro-II and Zorro-III him self) […]
Show full quote

Jo22 wrote on 2021-04-23, 14:42:

In which way are Zorro II and Zorro III superior ? On the physical side, I mean.

This... (from the inventor of Zorro-II and Zorro-III him self)

I tend to believe what is written in the mail. That the only superiour bus to Zorro-II and Zorro-III at that time was PCI.
EISA is the answer to Zorro-II and then he made Zorro-III even better. Yes. EISA was the answer to Zorro-II and not the other way around.
And Zorro-II is superiour to EISA. Does EISA automatically configure and assign resources?
Both Zorro-II and EISA does roughly 20mb/s. So on that point, they are equal.

So the question remains... Why implement something inferiour, make autoconfig run on it, and end up with the same speed?
And then came PCI. Even Haynie said that it was better than Zorro-III.
Sure there were MCA, however would IBM let Commodore implement Autoconfig in MCA, and use MCA without license fee?

actually EISA was a stopgap because the industry didnt want to may MCA royalties to IBM so they made ISA into 32bit and cribbed some from MCA.

Zorro is nothing more than the native 68k cpu bus. Commodores bus mastering was always a shitshow even up to the A4K it had issues (rumour is Dave is going to spin a new revision chip being paid for by cloanto or whoever the fuck owns the ip right now because bus mastering dma is busted).

EISA was not a response to Zorro II. Zorro I was 68k, Zorro II was 68020, Zorro III was basically 68030+

I'm sorry, my English isn't best. It's been years since I had English lessons.. 😅
I just hope things are not that difficult to understand. Especially the times make me feel a bit insecure. 😅
What I meant to express, at the very heart of it :

- It would have been an interesting idea to physically replace the ISA slots ,- which were used by bridgeboards-, by EISA slots.

- Because, EISA was a super set of ISA (two rows; ISA and native EISA), the official successor of ISA and because the connector fits nicely in the same spot.
Not much redesign would have been necessary. In case it didn't catch on, nothing would have been lost.
Except that Commodore spent a bit more money on high quality expansion slots with better specs.

- The whole logic thing would then have been up to the bridgeboards side (PC emulators).
This would have been super easy. EISA used a parallel bus, just like ISA. PCI slots on the other hand, are not equal.
Again, competing third-party companies would have had to implement EISA logic on their bridgeboards, not Commodore.
Except if it wanted to (making a new A2386SX alike board with a 486DLC).

If the user decided to keep the old expansion cards, all the ISA wiring would remain the same.
But with matching hardware, say, EISA bridgeboard (based on 386/486DLC CPUs which have a 32-Bit frontside bus), an EISA ethernet card etc.
the PC side could handle a lot of i/o in a smoother way, or at least without the ISA bottleneck.
Pure ISA hardware could also have been thrown into the mix, like a LAPC-I, an industrial controller, a transputer device, a chess card..

Some bridgeboards (examples):
https://bigbookofamigahardware.com/bboah/product.aspx?id=330
http://amiga.resource.cx/expde/goldengate

BloodyCactus wrote on 2021-04-24, 00:54:

actually EISA was a stopgap because the industry didnt want to may MCA royalties to IBM so they made ISA into 32bit and cribbed […]
Show full quote

brostenen wrote on 2021-04-23, 21:39:

This... (from the inventor of Zorro-II and Zorro-III him self) […]
Show full quote

Jo22 wrote on 2021-04-23, 14:42:

In which way are Zorro II and Zorro III superior ? On the physical side, I mean.

This... (from the inventor of Zorro-II and Zorro-III him self)

I tend to believe what is written in the mail. That the only superiour bus to Zorro-II and Zorro-III at that time was PCI.
EISA is the answer to Zorro-II and then he made Zorro-III even better. Yes. EISA was the answer to Zorro-II and not the other way around.
And Zorro-II is superiour to EISA. Does EISA automatically configure and assign resources?
Both Zorro-II and EISA does roughly 20mb/s. So on that point, they are equal.

So the question remains... Why implement something inferiour, make autoconfig run on it, and end up with the same speed?
And then came PCI. Even Haynie said that it was better than Zorro-III.
Sure there were MCA, however would IBM let Commodore implement Autoconfig in MCA, and use MCA without license fee?

actually EISA was a stopgap because the industry didnt want to may MCA royalties to IBM so they made ISA into 32bit and cribbed some from MCA.

Zorro is nothing more than the native 68k cpu bus. Commodores bus mastering was always a shitshow even up to the A4K it had issues (rumour is Dave is going to spin a new revision chip being paid for by cloanto or whoever the fuck owns the ip right now because bus mastering dma is busted).

EISA was not a response to Zorro II. Zorro I was 68k, Zorro II was 68020, Zorro III was basically 68030+

Amiga 2000 was introduced in march 1987 with Zorro-II slot and EISA announced in september 1988..... Yeah.... Pretty much sounds more like EISA was an answer to Zorro-II and not Zorro-II was an answer to EISA. Same speed, EISA did not configure it self automatically....

If anything was a shitshow of those two, then it was EISA. And as I did mention, then it was not untill PCI that something really superiour came along for home and office use. Perhaps Cilicon Graphics or HP had something better for the professional market, but I have no knowledge on that market.

brostenen wrote on 2021-04-24, 06:44:

Perhaps Cilicon Graphics or HP had something better for the professional market, but I have no knowledge on that market.

The main SGI desktop systems, including Indigo, Indy and Indigo2 use a combination of VME, EISA and GIO bus.

In the case of the original Indigo (1991) it uses a GIO32 bus (multiplexed 32bit data and addressing; anywhere from 16MB/sec to 130MB/sec depending on access and transfer mode).

The Indy (1993), again used a GIO32 bus.

The Indigo 2 (1992) uses a combination of EISA and GIO64 bus. The EISA bus is normally used for lower bandwidth devices such as the optional G160 Fast Ethernet card, extra SCSI cards, specialist serial ports etc. The GIO64 bus is what the graphics solution plugs into (supporting anywhere up to 320MB/sec).

Once you start talking about things other than desktop systems (e.g. deskside systems and their big iron) or desktops from the Octane onwards, then you get into the realms of really bespoke connections that are much closer to modern switched-fabric solutions like fibre channel or infiniband - totally different than what we would recognise as typical serial/parallel buses.

The difference with companies like SGI and HP is that they controlled both the hardware and the software stack, so if the part was on the vendors qualified hardware list, then it would work; no messing about with third party drivers - most of the time these would be part of the software stack that they provided (part of the kernel, in the case of IRIX and HP UX).

megatron-uk wrote on 2021-04-24, 18:15:

The main SGI desktop systems, including Indigo, Indy and Indigo2 use a combination of VME, EISA and GIO bus. […]
Show full quote

brostenen wrote on 2021-04-24, 06:44:

Perhaps Cilicon Graphics or HP had something better for the professional market, but I have no knowledge on that market.

The main SGI desktop systems, including Indigo, Indy and Indigo2 use a combination of VME, EISA and GIO bus.

In the case of the original Indigo (1991) it uses a GIO32 bus (multiplexed 32bit data and addressing; anywhere from 16MB/sec to 130MB/sec depending on access and transfer mode).

The Indy (1993), again used a GIO32 bus.

The Indigo 2 (1992) uses a combination of EISA and GIO64 bus. The EISA bus is normally used for lower bandwidth devices such as the optional G160 Fast Ethernet card, extra SCSI cards, specialist serial ports etc. The GIO64 bus is what the graphics solution plugs into (supporting anywhere up to 320MB/sec).

Once you start talking about things other than desktop systems (e.g. deskside systems and their big iron) or desktops from the Octane onwards, then you get into the realms of really bespoke connections that are much closer to modern switched-fabric solutions like fibre channel or infiniband - totally different than what we would recognise as typical serial/parallel buses.

The difference with companies like SGI and HP is that they controlled both the hardware and the software stack, so if the part was on the vendors qualified hardware list, then it would work; no messing about with third party drivers - most of the time these would be part of the software stack that they provided (part of the kernel, in the case of IRIX and HP UX).

Ahhh.... Yeah. Thanks for the info. They are indeed fast busses, compared to slow EISA and Zorro-II. 😁

brostenen wrote on 2021-04-24, 06:44:

Amiga 2000 was introduced in march 1987 with Zorro-II slot and EISA announced in september 1988..... Yeah.... Pretty much sounds more like EISA was an answer to Zorro-II and not Zorro-II was an answer to EISA. Same speed, EISA did not configure it self automatically....

I dont know why you think one has to be an answer to the other. They are totally unrelated.

MCA was drafted in 86 and came out in 87. IBM wanted royalties, the PC industry didnt want to pay. So they extended the 16bit ISA slot into a 32bit EISA slot to retain backward compatability. Zorro II has nothing to do with EISA. ZorroII is a direct extension of the 68k cpu pins you'd have a super hard time extrapolating it to x86. The Zorro I edge connector my on A1000 is tied directly to the cpu, no bus mastering no nothing. ZorroII added some dma bus mastering pins and autoconfig. Zorro II was still 16bit, EISA was 32bit. Neither were first with autoconfig.

nubus ahd autoconfig in 1984.

msx had it in 1983.

ZorroII was not an answer to EISA. EISA was not an answer to ZorroII.

Yeah there is a thing such as co-development, sometimes two different products that try to solve the same issue hit the market with short intervals. It takes years to develop an IO bus, I highly doubt EISA was an answer to anything. I actually really doubt that the EISA guys even cared about what the Zorro II was capable of, it was not even remotely related to their platform.

BloodyCactus wrote on 2021-04-24, 20:02:

I dont know why you think one has to be an answer to the other. They are totally unrelated. […]
Show full quote

brostenen wrote on 2021-04-24, 06:44:

Amiga 2000 was introduced in march 1987 with Zorro-II slot and EISA announced in september 1988..... Yeah.... Pretty much sounds more like EISA was an answer to Zorro-II and not Zorro-II was an answer to EISA. Same speed, EISA did not configure it self automatically....

I dont know why you think one has to be an answer to the other. They are totally unrelated.

MCA was drafted in 86 and came out in 87. IBM wanted royalties, the PC industry didnt want to pay. So they extended the 16bit ISA slot into a 32bit EISA slot to retain backward compatability. Zorro II has nothing to do with EISA. ZorroII is a direct extension of the 68k cpu pins you'd have a super hard time extrapolating it to x86. The Zorro I edge connector my on A1000 is tied directly to the cpu, no bus mastering no nothing. ZorroII added some dma bus mastering pins and autoconfig. Zorro II was still 16bit, EISA was 32bit. Neither were first with autoconfig.

nubus ahd autoconfig in 1984.

msx had it in 1983.

ZorroII was not an answer to EISA. EISA was not an answer to ZorroII.

Just remember this. I was not the one that proclaimed one was the answer to the other in the first place. All I am arguing, is that EISA was not the answer to Zorro-II. All I have said, is that if any one of them are an answer to the other, then it can only be EISA that are an answer to Zorro-II. Again. I did not start claiming it.

appiah4 wrote on 2021-04-24, 21:02:

Yeah there is a thing such as co-development, sometimes two different products that try to solve the same issue hit the market with short intervals. It takes years to develop an IO bus, I highly doubt EISA was an answer to anything. I actually really doubt that the EISA guys even cared about what the Zorro II was capable of, it was not even remotely related to their platform.

As stated somewere else, then a bus like MCA was almost completely proprietary. Unless of course you paid up some license fee. Zorro on the other hand was Amiga technology, and companies like Commodore and Apple was not exactly those kind of companies that wanted others to make clones of their systems. IBM was like that as well, however that was more their BIOS that they guarded like a pack of lions with a fresh kill. So naturally the industry had to come up with something better than ISA, and I think that is why EISA came to be. Just funny that so many companies had to work together on that. Like how many engineers might have been involved in the devellopment of EISA? Were as at Commodore, Dave Haynie single handed did Zorro-II and Zorro-III. Actually, he designed the Amiga200o on his own. And perhaps the industry is more positive towards something that have been develloped by many people over a long time, compared to something that was develloped by one man in a couple of month's. Well... I really don't know, but that is kind of the vibe that I get from the Computer industry in general.

brostenen wrote on 2021-04-24, 21:39:

As stated somewere else, then a bus like MCA was almost completely proprietary.

This is the wrong way to look at it, MCA and EISA were competing because they were on platforms that basically ran the same software.

brostenen wrote on 2021-04-24, 21:39:

As stated somewere else, then a bus like MCA was almost completely proprietary. Unless of course you paid up some license fee. Zorro on the other hand was Amiga technology, and companies like Commodore and Apple was not exactly those kind of companies that wanted others to make clones of their systems. IBM was like that as well, however that was more their BIOS that they guarded like a pack of lions with a fresh kill. So naturally the industry had to come up with something better than ISA, and I think that is why EISA came to be. Just funny that so many companies had to work together on that. Like how many engineers might have been involved in the devellopment of EISA? Were as at Commodore, Dave Haynie single handed did Zorro-II and Zorro-III. Actually, he designed the Amiga200o on his own. And perhaps the industry is more positive towards something that have been develloped by many people over a long time, compared to something that was develloped by one man in a couple of month's. Well... I really don't know, but that is kind of the vibe that I get from the Computer industry in general.

EISA was a consortium of engineers because it had a decade of backward compatability to contend with. ZorroII had zero backward compat. Yeah Dave did the zorro bus on his own.. its pure 68k pinout with a couple of lines he added. He didnt have to worry about other manufacturers producing motherboards or chipsets, or a decade of cards. Zorro II was brand new, nothing used it. (A1K had two different edge connectors, not card slots).

Actually the Amiga 2000 was designed in Germany, Dave took that design and did a cost reduction, so he moved shit around, but didnt design the A2K, let alone design it on his own.

Either way, I love my genuine Amiga hardware (no fpga mister/vampire crap).

It's usually not about trying to compete with open standards. In Amigas case we'll give them the benefit of a doubt its becasue they couldn't just use open source hardware and the only solution was to build something from scratch. These days if you did these kinds of things you would be Apple and in that case its about trying to lock competitors out of their platforms and lock end users into your support chain and your products only. I doubt anything Amiga at the time was doing was this dubious. They simply needed something that worked with heir design and nothing was available. At the time Amiga was really hey lets build a next gen arcade machine in a computer and since its a computer it can be way more than that.

Superior buses aside, with open standards at the time you wouldn't just program games and software that would only take advantage of the best hardware at the time, you would make it run on anything, which is one of the reasons PCs were so far behind amigas, by the time open hardware had surpassed Amiga and general standards got a lot better Amiga would of needed to either embrace newer standards or do complete redesign to keep up. This is the problem with closed standards.

For Amiga to survive it really wasn't about eisa as much as they needed a way of running X86 which amigas didn't do.

BloodyCactus wrote on 2021-04-24, 23:55:

EISA was a consortium of engineers because it had a decade of backward compatability to contend with. ZorroII had zero backward […]
Show full quote

brostenen wrote on 2021-04-24, 21:39:

As stated somewere else, then a bus like MCA was almost completely proprietary. Unless of course you paid up some license fee. Zorro on the other hand was Amiga technology, and companies like Commodore and Apple was not exactly those kind of companies that wanted others to make clones of their systems. IBM was like that as well, however that was more their BIOS that they guarded like a pack of lions with a fresh kill. So naturally the industry had to come up with something better than ISA, and I think that is why EISA came to be. Just funny that so many companies had to work together on that. Like how many engineers might have been involved in the devellopment of EISA? Were as at Commodore, Dave Haynie single handed did Zorro-II and Zorro-III. Actually, he designed the Amiga200o on his own. And perhaps the industry is more positive towards something that have been develloped by many people over a long time, compared to something that was develloped by one man in a couple of month's. Well... I really don't know, but that is kind of the vibe that I get from the Computer industry in general.

EISA was a consortium of engineers because it had a decade of backward compatability to contend with. ZorroII had zero backward compat. Yeah Dave did the zorro bus on his own.. its pure 68k pinout with a couple of lines he added. He didnt have to worry about other manufacturers producing motherboards or chipsets, or a decade of cards. Zorro II was brand new, nothing used it. (A1K had two different edge connectors, not card slots).

Actually the Amiga 2000 was designed in Germany, Dave took that design and did a cost reduction, so he moved shit around, but didnt design the A2K, let alone design it on his own.

Either way, I love my genuine Amiga hardware (no fpga mister/vampire crap).

As far as I remember, then Dave did a complete redesign of the 2000 that Commodore Germany did. Now I can be wrong, as I have seen too many interviews with Dale Luck, Dace Haynie, Bil.Herd and other former Commodore hardware designers and engineers.

Warlord wrote on 2021-04-25, 02:13:

It's usually not about trying to compete with open standards. In Amigas case we'll give them the benefit of a doubt its becasue they couldn't just use open source hardware and the only solution was to build something from scratch. These days if you did these kinds of things you would be Apple and in that case its about trying to lock competitors out of their platforms and lock end users into your support chain and your products only. I doubt anything Amiga at the time was doing was this dubious. They simply needed something that worked with heir design and nothing was available. At the time Amiga was really hey lets build a next gen arcade machine in a computer and since its a computer it can be way more than that.

Superior buses aside, with open standards at the time you wouldn't just program games and software that would only take advantage of the best hardware at the time, you would make it run on anything, which is one of the reasons PCs were so far behind amigas, by the time open hardware had surpassed Amiga and general standards got a lot better Amiga would of needed to either embrace newer standards or do complete redesign to keep up. This is the problem with closed standards.

For Amiga to survive it really wasn't about eisa as much as they needed a way of running X86 which amigas didn't do.

Another factor is that the bosses at Commodore did not really understand, that 10 years ahead, means that you need something new that are 10 years ahead once competition catches up. Else consumers will feel let down when it does not happen again.

They had plenty of time, and they wasted it on what? A few stop gaps here and there. And the engineers and hardware devellopers at Commodore knew this and yet the bosses canned project right and left.

I see Doom and other first gen FPS, as the definitive nail in the coffin. At least we got some nice hardware.

brostenen wrote on 2021-04-25, 08:08:

I see Doom and other first gen FPS, as the definitive nail in the coffin. At least we got some nice hardware.

I would agree with that; Wolfenstein 3D woke people up to what you could achieve on a (modest) PC, but when Doom came along it was clear that the Amiga had no future.

brostenen wrote on 2021-04-25, 08:08:

Another factor is that the bosses at Commodore did not really understand, that 10 years ahead, means that you need something new […]
Show full quote

Warlord wrote on 2021-04-25, 02:13:

It's usually not about trying to compete with open standards. In Amigas case we'll give them the benefit of a doubt its becasue they couldn't just use open source hardware and the only solution was to build something from scratch. These days if you did these kinds of things you would be Apple and in that case its about trying to lock competitors out of their platforms and lock end users into your support chain and your products only. I doubt anything Amiga at the time was doing was this dubious. They simply needed something that worked with heir design and nothing was available. At the time Amiga was really hey lets build a next gen arcade machine in a computer and since its a computer it can be way more than that.

Superior buses aside, with open standards at the time you wouldn't just program games and software that would only take advantage of the best hardware at the time, you would make it run on anything, which is one of the reasons PCs were so far behind amigas, by the time open hardware had surpassed Amiga and general standards got a lot better Amiga would of needed to either embrace newer standards or do complete redesign to keep up. This is the problem with closed standards.

For Amiga to survive it really wasn't about eisa as much as they needed a way of running X86 which amigas didn't do.

Another factor is that the bosses at Commodore did not really understand, that 10 years ahead, means that you need something new that are 10 years ahead once competition catches up. Else consumers will feel let down when it does not happen again.

They had plenty of time, and they wasted it on what? A few stop gaps here and there. And the engineers and hardware devellopers at Commodore knew this and yet the bosses canned project right and left.

I see Doom and other first gen FPS, as the definitive nail in the coffin. At least we got some nice hardware.

One of the problems Commodore had, was that the bosses wanted a repeat of the C64 success. A cheap, simple system that sold like bottled water in the Sahara. The folks who actually designed the Amiga wanted to make a serious computer. If, when after the Amiga was released, the engineers had been given the opportunity to focus on developing serious computers, i.e. improve the custom chipset, design future architecture etc, then it's very likely that they could have challenged IBMs reign. However, the bosses spread their resources too thin and work on too many projects. Flops such as the CDTV were among the few that actually hit the market, and it drained the company of resources.
A Commodore that had focused all their efforts on making the Amiga a successful workstation computer would have been much more competitive, despite the success of the A500 etc. Neither the ECS or AGA were anything near what the engineers had originally planned to/wanted to make.