Mehdi Ali's biggest screwup was not licensing Amiga UNIX to Sun. He wasn't just greedy, also stupid.

gdjacobs wrote:

Mehdi Ali's biggest screwup was not licensing Amiga UNIX to Sun. He wasn't just greedy, also stupid.

Truth.

brostenen wrote:

I just checked prices from the first half of 1992, so the prices is in Danish kroners from that year.... […]
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I just checked prices from the first half of 1992, so the prices is in Danish kroners from that year....

Amiga 2000 = 8995 Kroners.
286 addon expansion card = 6649 kroners.
386dx40 PC with 4mb ram, 80mb harddrive = 7400 kroners.

Mind the PC was one of those low budget clones, build from parts in lesser quality, compared to the Amiga.
If you wanted an IBM, Compaq or anything good brand, you had to pay more than double.

You were even able to find Apple Macintosh bridge boards for the Amiga, and by software emulation alone,
the Amiga platform were the fastest Mac in town. Sure that would be insanely expensive in regards to Amiga upgrades.

I was 15 at the time so it was my parents that bought the Amiga 1000 in late 1985. I recall it being $1200 and change for the base system plus they purchased the 256K expansion and a 1080 monitor, but I have no idea what those extras cost. One of the first programs running on that machine at my house besides the Boing ball demo? The EA demo disk of course which had the mesmerizing (15 years old in 1985 mesmerizing) Polyscope graphics demo.

https://youtu.be/QxZD65G_Yks

liqmat wrote:

I was 15 at the time so it was my parents that bought the Amiga 1000 in late 1985.

It was '82 and I'd just turned 13 and we got a C64 for Christmas. Reading the manual that came with it, we saw a notice that when you want to use a diskette for the first time, you must initialize it. What we didn't realize was this was a brand new diskette, not one that was already written (such as the one in the "Disk Bonus Pack"); we initialized it and then we were disappointed to realize we'd erased it. N00BS!!! We took it to the PX and got it traded out, but it really was a bummer to have done something so dumb. If only that diskette had been write-protected, and if only that page of the manual took extra care to explain that initializing a diskette wasn't necessary for diskettes that had software on them from the factory.

The EA demo disk of course which had the mesmerizing (15 years old in 1985 mesmerizing) Polyscope graphics demo.

Neat demo, reminiscent of some on the Apple II computers, and like a proto-Acidwarp.

How I lusted for the Amiga back then! Still, the very BEST graphics were the ones for the Infocom game "Suspended". I don't know why I threw away the giant hardboard folding map and the little vinyl robot icons when I moved back in '99.

AlaricD wrote:

I don't know why I threw away the giant hardboard folding map and the little vinyl robot icons when I moved back in '99.

Oh, don't even go there. The amount of awesome materials I have trashed over the years is almost unforgivable. I finally forgave myself. 🤣

Speaking of which, anyone catch this bit of news...

http://www.indieretronews.com/2019/05/goadf-f … a-software.html

Oooh basically Daemon Tools for Amiga?

gdjacobs wrote:

Mehdi Ali's biggest screwup was not licensing Amiga UNIX to Sun. He wasn't just greedy, also stupid.

I would say that the Amiga600 and the C64-GS console, might be one of the biggest mistakes too. I don't know what was a bigger screwup than the other. Just saying that they probably rivals each other pretty close. At least today, we have the A600 and it is fairly sought after these days. Yet back then, nobody actually understood it. Yet from a money making point of view, then yes, the failure of the SUN deal might be the biggest one. Yet from a product point of view, then I actually do not know what was the biggest.

Pretty graphics and sound are actually a liability in a business computer. (Companies don't want their employees playing games on the office computers.) Same for school computers. This is why Apple created the black-and-white Macintosh and deliberately made it incompatible with the Apple II, which was a much superior multimedia machine.

Errius wrote:

Pretty graphics and sound are actually a liability in a business computer. (Companies don't want their employees playing games on the office computers.) Same for school computers. This is why Apple created the black-and-white Macintosh and deliberately made it incompatible with the Apple II, which was a much superior multimedia machine.

I politely disagree with this. The original Macintosh could produce fairly clear sampled sound and if higher resolution color tubes and the graphics system to back that up could have been consumer price friendly I guarantee you Apple would have done so. So saying the Apple II was a much superior multimedia machine is not completely accurate. Yes it had color, but very limited and it certainly didn't have the resolution the Mac did. At the time those machines served two different purposes and it was necessary because the different technologies driving those machines had very different cost structures. The fact most schools in my area, when I was growing up, had Apple IIs shows to me it was mostly about cost. Apple II systems were being used in some schools almost until 1990 in my region. More color and sound only enhances business presentations and educational software and I seriously doubt Apple was thinking, "Hey, you know what, we better leave that fandangled color thing out of the scope of this project so accounting departments aren't playing Pac-man too much."

rasz_pl wrote:

At least Tramiel had a vision, one of making money by undercutting everyone, and it clearly worked up to his departure with record profit in 1984 and Commodores flagship model owning 40% of worlds computer share!

Lets not be too nice about Tramiel - he got that market share by selling computers with super thin profit margins and that burned the market out. His poor business practices also made computer dealers (in the US) to not want to work with Commodore ever again, which really hurt Amiga.

Errius wrote:

This is why Apple created the black-and-white Macintosh and deliberately made it incompatible with the Apple II, which was a much superior multimedia machine.

I don't think anyone deliberately made anything incompatible in those days. Compatibility just wasn't a thing.
The VIC20, C64 and C16 weren't compatible either.
The Atari ST wasn't compatible with the 8-bit line either.

The Mac just wasn't compatible because it used a 68000 CPU. The black-and-white thing was probably a limitation/tradeoff at the time. They could either build in high resolution monochrome, or low resolution colour. High res mono made more sense (which indeed would be a business choice).
The Atari ST had a best-of-both-worlds approach, then again, the Atari people were much more knowledgeable about graphics than Apple was.

Don't forget that the Amiga was a better Mac at some point....

RetroManCave: The Fastest Apple Mac is an Amiga - Fact or Fiction?

And 486slc2-50 PC bridge board in an Amiga3000. Now the best, but better than nothing....

Amiga Golden Gate 486SLC2

brostenen wrote:

I would say that the Amiga600 and the C64-GS console, might be one of the biggest mistakes too. I don't know what was a bigger screwup than the other. Just saying that they probably rivals each other pretty close. At least today, we have the A600 and it is fairly sought after these days. Yet back then, nobody actually understood it. Yet from a money making point of view, then yes, the failure of the SUN deal might be the biggest one. Yet from a product point of view, then I actually do not know what was the biggest.

+CDTV, they made a ton of them, barely sold any, $1K price tag (~$2K todays money), probably the biggest write off

Munx wrote:

rasz_pl wrote:

At least Tramiel had a vision, one of making money by undercutting everyone, and it clearly worked up to his departure with record profit in 1984 and Commodores flagship model owning 40% of worlds computer share!

Lets not be too nice about Tramiel - he got that market share by selling computers with super thin profit margins and that burned the market out. His poor business practices also made computer dealers (in the US) to not want to work with Commodore ever again, which really hurt Amiga.

But it did deliver profit and market share for Commodore. Sure, Tramiel couldnt care less about what he was selling, computers, typewriters, calculators, chopped liver, whatever, but he understood money. 10% of 1 billion dollars is a lot of money, plus you are sustaining your fab capability (engineering know how, infrastructure). At 40% market share you cant "not work" with someone, inevitably half your walkins ask about the product. Commodore not only survived video games crash of 1983, it rode it like a champ!
Things could of looked drastically different under Tramiel, maybe Amiga would ship with embedded C64 on a chip compatibility, maybe Amiga would get packaged as a gaming appliance bypassing dealer network entirely. Amiga did deliver SNES like performance, cut down cartridge based version could easily sold at same $200 price point in 1990 and benefit from 5 years of already established software base. Tramiel would undercut the shit out of Nintendo licensing fees.

brostenen wrote:

And 486slc2-50 PC bridge board in an Amiga3000. Now the best, but better than nothing....
Amiga Golden Gate 486SLC2

$1K for ~386DX25 performance in 1992, still no HD floppy, emulated slow graphics. You paid full PC price (without monitor) for worse system, what a deal! 😀

Scali wrote:

Errius wrote:

This is why Apple created the black-and-white Macintosh and deliberately made it incompatible with the Apple II, which was a much superior multimedia machine.

I don't think anyone deliberately made anything incompatible in those days. Compatibility just wasn't a thing.
The VIC20, C64 and C16 weren't compatible either.

Agreed, it was the wild west and any advancement was hard fought so even inter-company compatibility was a burden that could break a project. The C128 was compatible with the 64 but from what I've read that was no easy thing - it's basically just 2 computers in the one box.

badmojo wrote:

Scali wrote:

Errius wrote:

This is why Apple created the black-and-white Macintosh and deliberately made it incompatible with the Apple II, which was a much superior multimedia machine.

I don't think anyone deliberately made anything incompatible in those days. Compatibility just wasn't a thing.
The VIC20, C64 and C16 weren't compatible either.

Agreed, it was the wild west and any advancement was hard fought so even inter-company compatibility was a burden that could break a project. The C128 was compatible with the 64 but from what I've read that was no easy thing - it's basically just 2 computers in the one box.

C128 was an attempt at selling off excess stock of old/broken chips. C64 compatibility was the only reason this scam of a computer sold at all. People picked it up assuming 128 is twice the 64, to quickly realize its the price that got doubled, with extra hardware being incompatible/useless to available software.

Is there any advantage to owning a C64 over a C128?

Errius wrote:

Is there any advantage to owning a C64 over a C128?

you have leftover money for a floppy drive
Edit:
to expand on that, C128 price = C64 + floppy
C128D (1987 $499, one with buildin floppy, 3 CPUs for the price of 3 CPUs, but only one running actual useful code at any given moment, and 2 graphic processors for the price of 2 graphic processors with only one ever running) = almost price of brand new A500

Errius wrote:

Is there any advantage to owning a C64 over a C128?

You don't have to hold C= to play games 😀

Scali wrote:

I don't think anyone deliberately made anything incompatible in those days. Compatibility just wasn't a thing. The VIC20, C64 an […]
Show full quote

Errius wrote:

This is why Apple created the black-and-white Macintosh and deliberately made it incompatible with the Apple II, which was a much superior multimedia machine.

I don't think anyone deliberately made anything incompatible in those days. Compatibility just wasn't a thing.
The VIC20, C64 and C16 weren't compatible either.
The Atari ST wasn't compatible with the 8-bit line either.

The Mac just wasn't compatible because it used a 68000 CPU. The black-and-white thing was probably a limitation/tradeoff at the time. They could either build in high resolution monochrome, or low resolution colour. High res mono made more sense (which indeed would be a business choice).
The Atari ST had a best-of-both-worlds approach, then again, the Atari people were much more knowledgeable about graphics than Apple was.

I think the problem, among others, was, that the price for RAM was still high. At least for the amount required for a proper frame buffer (in colour).
The Atari ST's hi-res mode was monochrome, too. Same for the C64 running GEOS (it used a monochrome "hi-res" mode, too, albeit that was hardly up to CGA in low-res mode. 😉)
In low-res modes, it's really hard to work with anything 320x???. That's also the reason why Microsoft included an MCGA driver only once "just for fun" in Win 3.0 MME.
IMHO, the minium resolution is about ~512x200 or so (just a random number). Another approach would have been to race the beam, as the Atari 2600 did.
But that would have been very stressing for the computer's main processor on the other hand. By going the monochrome route,
it was at least possible to design proper GUIs and do actual work. It was for example possible, to use a Mac or Atari ST for desktop publishing,
for the creation of clip arts or for doing CAD/CAM. Now that I think of it, a third method also would have been possible, but wasn't exactly useable for GUIs:
The use of a Direct-view storage CRT (aka DVST) display which is based on storage tubes, as seen in the original Battlestar Galactica series.
Here's a link to the the site Starring the Computer, which shows some interesting Tektronix 4051 Terminals. 😀
http://www.starringthecomputer.com/computer.html?c=298

PS: I also recommed watching The Silicon Valley Story (aka Pirates of Silicon Valley).
It's a documentation-type of film based on a book - most importantly, though, it also shows some interesting computer props. 😀

Edit:

Errius wrote:

Is there any advantage to owning a C64 over a C128?

Well, in theory, there was an advantage of owning a C128 over a C64, at least.. 😉
The C128 floppy drive was about the first non-broken model (the normal C64 floppy -while it could use a parallel i/O if modified-
used a slow serial connection by default. The reason were design errors and forced backwards compatibility with the very limited VC20 computer.
I'm speaking uder correction, but I think one of the shift-registers required for normal serial I/O were defective -in either the C64 or the floppy.)
Anothe advantage was the C128 native mode. It had an usable BASIC and more capabilities. And could be used for serious work (80 chars per line).
Sadly, though, Commodore installed a Z80 CPU in order to run a completely out-dated OS, CP-M 80. Don't get me wrong, I like CP/M,
but by the mid-80s, that OS was about dead. At least the Z80 version (-> little to no new software was under development).
If Commodore added a NEC V20, 80188 or an 8088 (ugh) and shipped it together with an MS-DOS compatible OS (say DOS-Plus or CP/M-86),
this computer would have had a better chance. Just think about it. A C64 and a real(!) personal computer in one system.
Let's imagine what would have been possible with access to SID and C128 graphics modes from the PC side. 😉

Edit: Minor edits.