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@{"b"}A History  

Part Three: @{"ub"}The AGA Machines  

At long last, Commodore had done something right for once! Although the A500+ and A600 were not exactly warmly received, the A1200 and A4000 were a much greater success.  

Although rumours had been around of such machines, Commodore's typical policy of secrecy and no-hype meant that nobody could be sure of anything. It is interesting to look back on magazines of just a few months before, to see them moaning, in particular on the lack of 256 colour modes - from Monkey Island in only 32 colours, to making price comparisons with PCs, with involve a several hundred pound graphics card to 'match' VGA (!). And you think; little do they know...  

Of course, newer machines mean more incompatibilites (both software and hardware), but there seemed to be less concern, this time. Maybe people were used to it after the A500+ and the A600, or more likely, the much better specs made up for it.  

The A4000 meant the fastest Amiga yet, with a then blistering 25MHz '040. And plenty of room for expansion, just like previous 'big box' Amigas. The new operating system was excellent, with all sorts of additions (although maybe not quite the jump as from 1.3 to 2.0): Datatypes, Locale, Workbench backdrops, support for AGA (of course), better support for graphics cards (RTG), etc...  

Not everyone was pleased, however, in particular the A1200... While 14MHz '020, 32bit architecture, 2MB Chip RAM where great, what about a high density disk (which was in the A4000)? How about improved sound, or maybe a digital signal processor? The reason was (as always?) price, and you can't have everything for £400.  

For a while, there was a huge gap between the A1200 and A4000; for a while the A3000 filled the position, but lack of AGA meant a new machine was surely inevitable. Eventually, mid '93, it appeared in the form of the A4000/030 - exactly as the original A4000, but with an '030 instead. You can't help wondering why they had to do that (or only that) - why not an A1200/030 (either instead, or as well)? An A1200 with an '030, SIMM sockets and high density floppy, but no Zorro slots, meaning a far lower price than an A4000/030. Instead, you were left to add one of the many accelerator boards which were appearing (still cheaper than an A4000, but not as cheap as an A1200/030 could have been...)  

It wasn't long before 50MHz '030s were available for A1200s - but no more, for then. All sorts of other add-ons became available, so no one moaned about incompatibilities with A500 hardware anymore.  

Not only did the A4000/030 appear in mid '93; the A1200 dropped to £300, and the CD32 was released, also at that price. As for the former, it was good news to buyers everywhere, and led to increasing sales (5,000 A1200s a week by late '93, according to one source). But this was also the beginning of the end for Commodore, with their 'cash flow problem'. The fall in price was more to liquidate stock to raise capital than anything else.  

The CD32, was in a way CDTV 2, except this time marketed as a console ('The World's First 32bit CD Console'), and not an 'interactive entertainment thingy'. The CD32 never met the success of the A1200, but it did much better than CDTV. In a way, it is difficult to assess it; on the one hand, its success was nothing like the Playstation of later times, or the older Mega Drive and SNES, but at the same time, it did far better than anything else available at the time, namely Mega Drive, Jaguar and CDI. Maybe the market wasn't ready for a 'next generation' console yet. Or maybe Commodore didn't make that market ready.  

The CDI, I mention? Yes, it always amused me, the way they went on about the CDI being better than CDTV. But a couple of years later, along comes CD32 - of course, you would expect it to be much better. So why was the CDI still being marketed, and at a more expensive price? In fact the CDI went on being advertised for quite a while after the CD32 had left the market.  

The CD32 was not just a console, although making it a computer has always been rather more expensive than it was with the CDTV.  

And so 1993 came to an end... in many ways, an excellent year for Commodore and Amiga, but also the year they lost millions.  
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Next issue... 1994 - The end of Commodore.  
 
 
 
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