Commodore Launching Amiga-brand Desktops

[belardo]

[citation][nom]haramir[/nom]I miss my Commodore 128 and Amiga 500 as much as the next guy, but I don't see dropping that kind of cash on aesthetics. I have no idea where most of my old games are now, nor do I have a 5 1/4" drive to install them with (assuming of course that the disks are still good after all these years.)Neat, but I'll pass, thank you.[/citation]

There is a free C=64 emulator that works very well. It includes C128 & even VIC20 as well. The download from the legit company includes lots of demos and some games. If you buy the pro version, you get tons of 8bit games. It runs nicely in Windows7.

My 5 year old is NOT impressed with it. Not when his computer is an AMD X2, 2GB RAM, Gefore 8600GT. Thats a bit better than dad's old (yellow) 1-2Mhz C=128... Grandma was JUST telling him last night she bought my first computer... $400 in 85, just the computer! (no floppy drive, no modem, no mouse, no monitor).

 

[Stifle]

I agree with other posters in saying that the cases should be sold stand-alone. I have seen core i7 mods in cases with less leg room to them. A stand alone retro case would be a decent sell, though I doubt they would make as much profit on them.

 

[thechief73]

Well as they say nostalgia sells, just look at Dodge. But I think their market is going to be smaller than expected because what middle aged geek dosent already have a PC or two, that most likly will perform better than an atom. Just my 2¢

Commodore was nothing to me becasue I was just too young, but our family was a proud owner of a IBM-286 lol.

 

[theoutbound]

The hardware in the PC64 is unbalanced to say the least. Can the replica case not handle the heat for anything but the Atom?

 

[blppt]

"Well as they say nostalgia sells, just look at Dodge. "

The Challenger is a freaking beautiful car, although it gets handily spanked by the new 5.0 Mustang in just about every performance area.

Too bad they cant put the Challenger shell over the new stang, LOL.

 

[megamanx00]

Meh

 

[ta152h]

[citation][nom]PercyP[/nom]Commodore Amigas were years ahead of their time, nothing came close, the Atari ST was a mere shadow. With dedicated hardware and a full blown WIMP OS written in C they made PC-DOS look Neanderthal. The family of 68k processors still live on in the Cell processor. Surely somebody can design a machine that can once more catapult the home user out beyond the limitation of PC architecture? Parallel cell processors, now you're talking: a true inheritance of the Amiga mantle.[/citation]

You seem to be leaving out OS/2, which was more powerful than anything the Amiga had. It wasn't as popular was Windows, but was a Hell of a lot more popular than the Amiga.

The Amiga had too many problems when it was introduced, and by the time they ironed a lot of them out, the PC world had caught up and passed them. Co-processor video cards, a system bus that allowed multiple bus-masters, which allowed even more co-processors (like smart hard disk controllers, with their own cache), and a much more powerful OS with a GUI. The PS/2 and OS/2 had a similar issue. The PS/2's Microchannel had some problems with multiple bus masters in the first Model 80s, and OS/2 was late and arrived without a GUI in version 1.0, and, of course, nothing was out for either, but IBM fixed it quickly. Commodore went from one problem to the next, and by the time they ironed out most of the problems, there was no point in the machine. Everything had been done, and done better, in the PC market.

That's always the lesson in computers. You can have a nice machine, or great idea, but if it's not working right at the right time, you'll get passed by.

Even Intel isn't immune to this - look at their RDRAM fiasco. It got cheap, and it worked well with the Pentium 4, but it was just too late by then.

Only true monopolies like Microsoft get away with it - most of the time.

 

[angelraiter]

Sorry, I meat to quote this but messed up:

[citation][nom]jamesedgeuk2000[/nom]Maybe in America but in Europe Amiga/Commadore/Amstrad/BBC/Atari ST/etc were the schizzle, consoles couldn't compete with home computers until Sega Released the Mega Drive (Genesis in US), this is why we were immune to the "video game crash of 1983" because we mostly didn't care about consoles at the time[/citation]

This ^

I lived in Italy from 1990 to '94 and Commodores and Amigas were extremely popular, with all kinds of controllers, add-on hardware, etc.. I remember when I bought my floppy drive for the C64, it cost like 200 bucks and it was the awesomest thing ever!

@PercyP: I agree, they were ahead of their time, they did everything any other PC could do (and more, one could argue), they also cost less than a PC and did their job extremely well, I'll even risk it and say that Macs were weird compared to the later Amigas, like the 600 (which I had, btw) and the 1200.

 

[bv90andy]

Just how did Commodore live in the past decade? What did they sell?

 

[kiniku]

Next up, a TRS 80 remake Color Computer fuly emulating an upgraded 16K memory, casette tape drive and 300 baud accoustic coupler phone modem.

 

[thee_prisoner]

In case you haven't seen this site it has many reviews on old Apple products, Amigas (including the video toaster), Wintel machines and DOS. Here's a link.
http://www.archive.org/details/computerchronicles

The Prisoner

 

[turbolover22]

I thought the article was a look back at the announcement of the original C64 until I read the specs of what is inside.

I couldn't believe this was a real announcement today. Still not sure I believe it and it has had 10 minutes to sink in.

 

[blppt]

"You seem to be leaving out OS/2, which was more powerful than anything the Amiga had. "

Erm, not really....IIRC OS/2 did not have pre-emptive multitasking until version 2.0 (1993?) which was well after AmigaDOS/AmigaOS had it (1985). And by 1993, Commodore was circling the drain IMHO, not keeping their Amiga ahead of other systems like it had been in its heyday. Regardless of what great OS it had at this time, Amiga was doomed.

 

[danieth]

I can see a Commodore having some precedence in my living room if it's not that expensive. It would have to actually have some features though, and I do not think it will have anything like before. I only hope there not using the Commodore name just to propel this.

 

[angelraiter]

[citation][nom]danieth[/nom]I only hope there not using the Commodore name just to propel this.[/citation]

I seriously doubt it dude, I mean, even the few of us that were old and smart enough to use C64s back in the day, might go out and buy something just cause it looks like a C64, but the other 95% of the PC market that probably has never even heard of a C64 wouldn't even care. I see this Atom PC in a C64 shell as a collectible, and if I had some cash just sitting around, I might actually buy it for that "awe" effect it would bring to the few people that can actually understand what it means. So, I don't think its a brand they are trying to sell, they are trying to sell to a Niche Market, the Amiga being something different and open(?) and the C64 look-a-like as a collectible, cool little PC. I don't see this as something being "propelled", I see it as something "nerdish", different and in some ways, really cool, but definitely not a mass-market product, and I'm pretty sure the guys over there making this happen know it.

 

[YardstickWHACK]

Sort of makes me want to rip apart my old C64 that is sitting in the garage and put modern parts in it.

 

[LordConrad]

I still have a fully functional Commodore 64c, with a 1541 diskette drive and an Epyx Fastload cartridge. Haven't had it hooked up in a while...

 

[Guest]

If you are looking for latest 68k-compatible retro-platform with AROS support, do not forget to check out Natami at www natami net

Youtube video with this awesome incoming hardware in action is available with "natami stage II video" keywords.

Natami is truly Amiga-compatible architecture with self-made, brand new 68k CPU onboard, SuperAGA, miles faster Blitter, 512 DDR2 memory, truecolor screen modes with CHUNKY support, CPU sidekick units and many, many more!

Just google "retroage natami" and read the interview with the Natami Team.

This is huge. And it is coming soon!

www natami net

 

[angelraiter]

[citation][nom]LordConrad[/nom]I still have a fully functional Commodore 64c, with a 1541 diskette drive and an Epyx Fastload cartridge. Haven't had it hooked up in a while...[/citation]

That stuff was the very best stuff you could get for the C64 back then.. Nice dude! LoL

 

[Luscious]

The history of the Amiga is I think the best example you will ever find of how NOT to run an American company - high-tech product, innovative concept, mass appeal, leagues ahead of the competition...only to get sunk by corporate mismanagement and ignorance.

I was a huge Amiga advocate back in the day, but as many here have said, the suits at the top sat on their fat asses and failed to drive the platform forward. I loved my Amiga 1000, but got sick and tired of those Guru Meditation Errors. Hardware upgrades were such a pain, and good software was expensive. After watching Commodore kick the bucket in the early 90's and sell out to that obscure German PC retailer Escom, I realized that even an A4000T would have been a paperweight investment with no future upgrades or support. Well, I guess Bill Gates saved the day with Windows 95.

I still have my A1000 sitting on it's old desk at my mom's home - and it still fires up! But I'm much more happy having got my Pentium box with W95 and moving over to the MS/PC world. Had the Amiga gotten the rep it deserved, and the company run by engineers instead of imbeciles, the Amiga could have lived on and still be common-place today.

 

[captaincharisma]

man just say no to beige cases

 

[bradlei]

y were dodgy, hard to use slow computers the good old days??? These r the good one's when it comes to tech and it's only getting better.

 

[angelraiter]

[citation][nom]bradlei[/nom]y were dodgy, hard to use slow computers the good old days??? These r the good one's when it comes to tech and it's only getting better.[/citation]

Things are just easier now, it takes less effort. Back then we had to really think, we had to know complex code to just operate a pc.. Don't knock those days, they were a time of great progress and forward thinkers! Now things are just pretty much done, and yes, there is much tech progress, but the actual inventions are not as revolutionary as they were.

 

[blppt]

"y were dodgy, hard to use slow computers the good old days??? These r the good one's when it comes to tech and it's only getting better. "

I would make the argument that for the average person, an Amiga 500 was easier to use than any PC or Mac built today. You just put in a floppy at bootup. Doesnt get much simpler than that.

Now, PCs back then were of course, largely much more difficult to use than todays GUI-driven everything windows and apple PCs, but I really did like the low overhead of DOS-based games, and honestly, with all the tweaking of nvidia and ati drivers, sound card drivers, etc, to optimize game performance in windows, you could almost say it wasnt much more difficult to free up conventional memory or map sound card IRQ/DMAs back in the day.

 

[belardo]

[citation][nom]bradlei[/nom]y were dodgy, hard to use slow computers the good old days??? These r the good one's when it comes to tech and it's only getting better.[/citation]

Talking about 16bit computers of 1985~1995:
MS-DOS was always a crap OS... period. Hard to use, one job at a time, not a GUI.
MacOS was easy to use, limited, single tasking. Super expensive hardware.
AmigaOS easy to use, but powerful CLI as well. Multi-tasking was natural. Hardware was cheaper than most clones. Came with graphics and sound standard. ADOS 1.x was ugly (Blue and orange? with B&W) but I made it 2-tone gray with B&W which made it look far more PROFESSIONAL. Then ADOS 2.0~3.0 went to greys