The Amiga story is a cautionary tale on how to take a superior product and just kill it. From Commodore mishandling the system and declining not to invest into any R&D to Escom just blundering their way through the systems abilities and mishandling every aspect of the machine is just depressing. The system was truly groundbreaking on many different levels. I’ll wager poor Jay Miner was turning over in his grave at how his creation, his visionary system was ultimately butchered. Such a sad waste. I am 52 and something of a collector. I own 11 Amiga systems. All A500’s. 7 not working but used as donors for the other 4. All are treasured, even the broken ones. It’s taken me 28 years to acquire them all. I’m proud to do my part to keep this marvelous system alive.
The industry was a mess, less informed and a lot smaller back then. Amiga forming out of disgruntled Atari employees speaks volumes. In today's environment and a massive market for tech, it would've done well as a niche product with its superior technology. I think the Sony Playstation changed everything just in time for unprecedented media hype and acceptance by non geeks. Then of course PC graphics cards. Today the Raspberry PI feels like a niche product but has sold heading towards 50 million units.
I don't think Commodore had a choice.... They couldn't invest because they didn't have the money. I like to think to the guys at the top prefer to live it up in style, while letting the employees suffer with what money they had.
Escom was unable to repair the damages Commodore did to the Amiga. It was too late to develop a a modular model that could compete with cheap PC clones. The development of an Amiga that could use PC expansions to some extent should have started at the time when A500 was released or even earlier.
@@mattx5499 True, but then its a lucky toss of the coin.., Would consumers buy it back in 1986? and would developers develop for it, or was it too soon? There would be 'pros' and 'con's there
@@mattx5499most likely the early 90s. Amiga pc expansion slot would've done well if they did a couple of years earlier. Sad how AAA, A+ and hombre were never expansion pc slot cards and even used in arcade boards.
Such a terrible shame how Commodore flushed the Amiga down the gutter, after 30+ years it still makes me sad they really had gold in their hands. For me there never was another computer that had the magic of the Amiga.
It's just amazing how the ingenuity of a few engineers who just wanted to build their dream computer can snow ball and produce such a massive impact on people. And businesses crumbling and fighting like little children for assets.
Still have my old Amiga 4000/40. Spent ~2 years writing game-making program in assembly, C= went bust when I was ready to put out the beta :/ Sad day. But I learned a lot.
I kept up the hope the Amiga would take off again but gave up by the year 2000. I still have an Amiga 1200 that I bought in 1992 after selling my A500, recapped, 030@50 new case... etc but again the realisation that it was dead as per it's former glory set in 22 years ago for me. A lot of things in this video jogged my memory from that time in so many ways. Excellent video 👍✊
Also here in Denmark, we thought Amiga would return. But the hope died fully during the first years of WinXP. Only some 50 people still used Amiga on a daily basis. Perhaps more, but we were 50 members on a community website. AmigaOS 4 breathed more life into the hope. But eventually Linux have replaced Amiga for most former Amiga addict's.
The case/hardware etc will change overtime, to the point the Amiga is basically 'unrecognizable' Its cool, but that's it. Now-a-days, you have emulation, which is an illusion... Its about as far from the hardware as you can get. :P
Next I will do a documentary looking at the os release and Amiga technologies products under escom. Here is a video of the Amiga walker prototype th-cam.com/video/KmBOAQjRb0E/w-d-xo.html
I used to work for Escom, they started well, but grew far too quickly for their own good, and the purchase of "Amiga" etc was the point I did an "Aight, Im out"... Make a LOT of money fixing their PCs after they went under though, lol. EDIT : Also, Escom were in the UK BEFORE the purchase of Rumbelows, the purchase of that company is what broke Escom in the UK, they went under not long after the purchase.
The downfall of a company like this is often a concoction of not just missteps but also misfortunes. For instance, the decline of Amiga runs parallel to the fall of Motorola against Intel. Additionally, the lackluster marketing in America played a part. Moreover, the management's decision to cut down the budget of the R&D department resulted in lagging behind in technological solutions of the era, like the embedded network card among many others. This platform was unbelievable. I remember, an emulated Mac inside an Amiga was faster than the original Mac. Truly a shame about Amiga's fate. It stands as a testament that it's not always the superior product that succeeds, but the product with superior marketing.
@@jediknight2350 Absolutely not, Amiga hardware is not necessary 68k. 68k was merely the CPU they was originally running on, but even the old AmigaOS from Commodore can runs on an original hardware expanded with a PowerPC CPU
I've always wondered whether the Amiga could have survived longer as a commercial platform if Commodore was a better-managed company. I know a lot of people would say an emphatic "yes" but I'm not so sure. Almost every non-Wintel platform save the Mac died in the 90s, and the Mac was a close-run thing. Seems like Commodore themselves had few ideas for the future of the Amiga by 93-94 and their Hombre system was simply a games console.
@woody-cool from what I've read, David Pleasance definitely had a more convincing business case than Escom. If they developed the Hombre technology they would have still have faced the challenge of being a small company competing with Sony's Playstation behemoth. And I'm not sure where they could have taken the Amiga, which desperately needed a post-AGA, post-Motorola development path.
Yeh I think if somebody had bailed out Amiga like Microsoft did with Apple maybe they would of survived. I am not that convinced that commodore uks plans would of worked tbh as commodores reputation was already shot at that point.
@@Djformula Your talking many years of disruptions at Commodore compared to a small disruption at Apple all due to the same thing.. Longevity matters too. Apple would have and more of a chance of being saved because the shorter time space they suffered, compared to Commodore.. In order to save the company, it would take Commodore longer to recover, and would customers 'wait' for Commodore ? Depends if a replacement got in at 'the right time' More of a shaky ground than Apple was.
My Amiga days really were the greatest, the graphics, the music and some truly incredible games. I was an indy 500 and f1gp junkie. For me personally it was the golden age.
Well done! I found it interesting and informative. I was a Commodore computer owner (first getting the Vic-20 when I was a teenager, then later also getting getting a C=64 and Amiga computers), so these computers will always have a place in my heart. Keep up the great work.
The rise -- and specifically fall -- of Commodore is a lot more nuanced and multidimensional than the typical narratives discussed in TH-cam videos and presented by any one individual, insider or outsider. I would encourage those trying to understand what happened to read multiple perspectives from multiple Commodorians and analysts, Brian Bagnal's book series, Dave McMurtrie's interviews, David Pleasance's books, and the perspectives of those who were actually there, not people regurgitating Wikipedia articles or bits and scraps they found on the Internet for their retrogaming hobbies.
Well, they didn't actually shrunk it, it's just emulating amiga in a complete different hardware, I have it running on my phone and it's a lot smaller, I have amiga running in my rg405m and it's even smaller And, it could run on even smaller platforms...
Just saw this... Wow... an eye opener for sure... For me, Commodore will forever be stuck on the C64... I harbor so much respect for it. I love the amiga, wrote so many games for it... but the C64 will be my love. This documentary is superb...
In 1982 i came from the TI99/4A to the c64,and the c64 was mind blowing. It was the first machine i learned so much on,had a modem to call world wide,use Quantum Link, run bbs's, make games, have copy parties, build my own 2400 baud interfaces.. i felt so productive on it suddenly and i still have my original c64! CMD products really made it fly!
Yeh, I think ultimately firing Thomas Rattigan the guy who managed to turn Commodore around and become profitable was the move that set them on the path to destruction. Killing the A500 while it was profitable and adding the A600 was indeed an insane move
@@diablothe2nd894 I think the genesis of the 600 was the 300 concept, a cost-reduced 500 intended to supplant the C64. But for some reason mission creep entered the equation and the 600 ended up more expensive than the 500!
I think Commodore's downfall was much more than bad management (from across in the States.) They led the way as/when the Amiga 1000 came out, and then with the A2000 and A500. However, it wasn't until the early 90's that they refreshed the chip set and launched AGA based Amigas, by which time the PC standards (and flexibility with the means for easy upgrades) had taken hold. Ideally, if the originally planned AAA chip set had been released early enough (in the very late 80's or very early 90's) rather than the late and cut-down AGA in the 90's, then that 'might' have made a difference. However, I was a big Amiga fan/user at the time (A500 and heavily expanded A1200) and would have loved to have seen what Commodore could have brought out next.
They waited entirely too long to release the 1200, and that was one of the final mistakes. Instead, they wasted resources on resurrecting old technology. Commodore was an enigma-great engineers coupled with executives who couldn’t touch their asses given three chances.
Great video and thoroughly put together, Ravi! Back in the day there were many Escom stores in Germany and Austria and it was a very well known brand, so our hopes were high. Also much software development went on, phase5's versus Haage&Partner's PPC operating systems, Warp OS, the official(?) OS 3.5 and 3.9 distributions that hardly anyone ever used, AROS, and IIRC much later there was Amithlon, a kind of Linux base system that could run AmigaOS on an AMD Athlon based machine, and so forth. Difficult times! After trying to use the Amiga for as long as possible for internet and productivity, in 1999 I switched to Windows NT, then 2000, then XP, in fact circumventing Windows 95/98 completely. Weird. Your video brought back a lot of memories! 😉
@@Djformula Yes. Also, the dawning era of internet, (Amiga) forums and news sites made us believe the whole Amiga movement was bigger than it actually was (almost no market share). In the end there was only hope but no sustainable future.
What made the Amiga great is something that no other computer company has managed to grasp, even to this day. Users want to have absolute control over their computers. They want to be free to customize the hardware and software in whatever way they want. That's why the Amiga brand had unshakable loyalty no matter who acquired it. Apple and Microsoft always made the users do things "their way." The Amiga had the most robust, talented user community in history. I was proud to be a part of this, from the very first Ami-Expo in NYC. I was one of the first people to buy an A-1000, and I still have my A-2500. I'll keep it forever.
ATARI was always ahead of Commodore . The ST had some nice 3rd party hardware and software ahead of everyone . 3D software with 3D glasses and the built-in MIDI . And , in the end ATARI had the first personal computer with true digital sound . And the AMIGA had ATARI proprietary patents .
@@BruceStephanHell no, the c64 blew the atari 8 bit machines out of the water, even the later atari 8 bit machines. The ST was infinitely weaker than the Amiga, hell the famous quote about ST's were "It's a CPU, and not much else."
@@maxxdahl6062 The ATARI 8 bit blew away the cheaper 64 . The 64 couldn't handle STAR RAIDERS . And the AMIGA is really an ATARI computer . It's only a Commodore by name . It's full of ATARI patents like the controllers .
@@BruceStephan Didn't need star raiders, the 400/800 weren't too much better graphically or audio wise than a 2600. The C64 could pull off sprites almost to NES quality, and MUCH better audio with the SID chip, it blew the atari 400/800 out of the water. The only faults with the 64 were the slow disk drive speed, and the weak BASIC. But those could both be remedied, and it at least HAD basic in rom. the 400 or 800 you had to buy a BASIC cart, and the first one was utter crap too.
@@maxxdahl6062 wakeup from your Commodore wet dream🤣ATARI kicked the 64s butt ! Hahahahaha !!! And the AMIGA is an ATARI machine in reality ! Hahahahaha !
Thanks a lot for that! Great video! I was thinking of making an Amiga history video myself when I finish with my current series but there's no reason to do so anymore. :) And I would really enjoy that separate video on the history of AAA if you ever get around to recording it. :) It was a very interesting and ambitious plan for the chipset, first time it was conceptualised but sadly quickly left aside in favour of a crappy refresh in form of AGA.
Amiga’s reliance on Motorola doomed the company as Motorola could not or would not compete with Intel. Hombre being built on PA-RISC or PowerPC would have also doomed any chance for keeping the company afloat. I heard somewhere commodore was planning on running Windows NT on Hombre machines. So they also lost the OS which was a big part of the brand. Why buy an NT machine on such a niche platform? In 1985 the machine was brilliant and made MacOS/Microsoft products look like toys. Unfortunately the platform languished and soon the custom chipsets were what held the platform back. By the 90’s the Amiga was simply outclassed by Wintel systems. Sadly.
Hey just a nitpick, but the plosives are super hardcore in this and the sound is a bit poorly mixed especially on my monitors. I would recommended a decent deplosive, if you need help with your specific daw/editor I'm be willing to give some tips. But for starters, EQ to cut out everything below 100hz, De-plosive, De-esser, and some mild compression.
Really interesting stuff, thanks. I remember, as an Amiga user, living through those years in the late 90’s as the Amiga suffered a slow, painful death. Traumatic. That dance thing was just ‘salt in the wound’ :-) No one considered the basics. You need to make a computer that’s good, and sell it! This is what Apple managed to eventually get right after narrowly avoiding bankruptcy themselves. Got an iMac in 1999.
Great video. 😃My obsession with computer graphics started on the A1000 - Amiga made it possible. I'll never throw away my A4000 Video Toaster/Flyer workstation that I used until '96.
What started the down fall of Commodore and this was revealed in a docoumentary on Commodore I watched on TH-cam within the past few years was this. In the Early 80's Jack Tramiel who started Commodore and pretty much owned it at that time got stupid and brought in a board of directors who knew nothing about the computer business. From what that documentary revealed said board started shoving product after product out the door, and not having a base of software for the computers. Jack had told them they can't be doing that, guess what the board of directors wouldn't listen, and kept this up in to the Amiga era. By 1982 or was it 1983, Jack Tramiel had gotten so fed up with what his board of directors was doing he left the company he founded from what that documentary revealed. In 1983, he had the chance to buy Atari's hardware devision which he did. The key thing he failed to do, was also buy Atari's software devision which at that time was sold to a Japanese company, not sure which one off hand. Atari and it's computers also to die off at roughly the same time as the Amiga Computers. I regret not keeping the Commodore 64C Computer I had, or the Amiga 500 I had. Honestly the Amiga Computers and the Atari ST Computers were great computers, which they were still around in modern versions, but that will never happen sadly.
Atari Arcade division is what you mean and they got sold to Namco... who then sold a portion of it to Atari of Japan calling themselves Atari Games with their home carts using the name Tengen.
Have a read of the two volumes of ¨From Vultures To Vampires¨ by David Pleasance, it helps to cut through some of the odd events that happened after Commodore went into bankcrupty.
Thank you for the great Video! The often-asked question of whether the Amiga 1200 was released too late by Commodore and/or too poorly equipped was unfortunately answered by reality 30 years ago. Of course, the AGA machines were a great leap forward and the Amiga 4000 in particular was definitely up to date and competitive in 1992 (e.g. with the Macintosh Quadra and the LC III) and even superior to conventional mainstream PCs (Intel 386DX, Intel 486DX and Intel 486DX2). So Commodore was actually well positioned in the high-end sector - also in terms of expandability. What the managers and developers in West Chester completely missed, however, was that the home computer and gaming market had completely changed in the early 90s. Powerful PCs (Intel 386DX, 486DX with SVGA, XGA and Soundblaster) became affordable for the masses in the early 90s and they were superior to OCS/ECS Amigas in every way (though not necessarily in integration and workflow). The all-in-one wedge design home computers of the 1980s were increasingly becoming obsolete. PCs also became established in schools and universities, while at the same time IT lessons became more important and made it necessary for many young people to use a PC in their private lives. On the other hand, the console market flourished and with the Sega MegaDrive/Genesis and the SuperNES (and also TurboGrafx-16), systems conquered the living rooms of middle-class families that were partially or completely superior to the Amiga and for which faster and more polished games were released. I remember well, in my Amiga peer group (about 15 teenagers from high school and our suburban neighbourhood), the releases of games like Wing Commander (PC), Dune II (PC), Wolfenstein 3D (PC), the new generation of LucasArts and Sierra Adventures with VGA and voice output (PC), Sonic the Hedgehog (MegaDrive), Street Fighter (SNES), etc. were real shockers. Creative software also appeared on the PC and was superior to the OCS/ECS Amiga versions, e.g. Deluxe Paint (256 colours, VGA), various music trackers (16/32 channels), etc. It was immediately clear to us: Commodore had to act, otherwise the Amiga would soon be on its last legs. Most of us had also had our Amigas since 1987/88, which in 1991/92 increased the need and nervousness about the upcoming decision for the next computer. First there was the CDTV failure, then Commodore announced a C65 and in early 1992 the Amiga 600 was released, making it clear to us (and probably millions of users worldwide) that the Amiga was not going anywhere! Commodore made the same nonsense that had led to the demise of its 8-bit line (TED series, C128) once again. Nobody was interested in a crippled version of the Amiga 500 at the beginning of 1992 and even less in a C64 successor, which would have been 8 years too late and was in the same performance range as the OCS Amigas! When the Amiga 1200 was released at the end of 1992, my entire peer group, including myself, had already moved forwards to PCs (386s or 486s with hard drives, 4 MB Ram, CD-ROM drives and good graphics and sound cards) and we were enjoying the new games and programmes. As sorry as we were - actually we were more mad than sorry at Commodore - but it was the right decision, because also the Amiga 1200 was no longer up to date (wedge design, outdated CPU & old sound chip designed in the early 80s, too little RAM, no hard drive, no HD floppy drive, no CD-ROM drive,...). In addition, there were hardly any games that fully utilised the AGA possibilities, but only slightly improved versions of the OCS/ECS games. The old Amigas were still very widespread, and software developers no longer believed that the AGA Amiga could make a commercial breakthrough. So what would have been the right time and equipment for the Amiga to survive as a successful mainstream product? AGA should have been released at least a year earlier and the basic Amiga variant (A1200) should have been equipped with at least a Motorola 68EC030 (28 MHz), 4 MB Ram, an HD floppy drive, a chunky pixel mode, an updated sound chip and at least the option of a hard drive and a CD-ROM drive from the outset. Full compatibility with the C64 and Commodore's 8-bit series through virtualisation or emulation would also have been a nice-to-have and an important signal to the Commodore-community. After that, Commodore should have launched the next Amiga generation on the market no later than 1994/95. A quantum leap to PowerPC or ARM processors and fully 3D-capable GPUs would then have been necessary to remain competitive. We will never know whether Commodore would have managed this. What we do know is that it became even more difficult to compete with the advanced Pentium PCs from the mid-90s onwards. Many previously well-established systems disappeared (e.g. Atari ST/TT, Acorn Archimedes, practically all competing European, North-American and Japanese home and professional computer systems) and even Apple was on the verge of bankruptcy. But that's another story...
I remember the CD32 was based on the Amiga 1200. Before thinking of a CD64 I think Commodore should have equipped both machines with at least 8 MB of Fast-RAM first and a full version of the 68020 CPU right from the start. Some Fast-Ram really speeds up the CPU, because it has exclusive access to it, no need to share small and slow 2 MB graphics RAM (Chip-Ram) with the custom chips.
The general population had already moved away from Amiga by 1993 here in Denmark. Mostly teens, still keeping Amiga alive by then. But adults had moved to MS Dos based stuff at that time. I remember that I as a teenager back then, had problems explaining why OS/2 in 1992/93, were a better choice than Dos to all adults. And I had the same issue in regards to test versions of Win95 in the first half of 1995. I remember when I tried April test-release of Win95, and it hit me instantly, that this was the future. You know, when you have that "this is it" moment. I was unable to explain this to people, as they believed their admins at work more. Back then, admins were stuck up, and snobby old men, that only had their diploma of education to their name. Admins did not follow the world of new tech, and so, my mother did not believe me because the admin at her job were against the start button. Yup. The start button it self.
Commenting as I start watching. I just know this will depress the crap out of me as a long time Amiga lover. Went through an A500+ then A1200 before moving to PC in 1998.
Heh 35:52 in and a photo of someone holding a #Amiga sign, thats a throwback to the IRCnet days right there! Did used to live on there back in the day too. Still have my A4000/60 hidden away too.
Beehive? Christmas tree? Nobody thought of traffic cone?? I got an A1200 in 1997 I think. My dad bought it for cheap in some random second-hand store. We even got an 030 accelerator and a CD-ROM drive that was housed in its own bulky case and connected via the pcmcia alot. I was quite happy for a while as it was abig step up from my old IBM PS/1 but even then I envied the modern PCs with their way cooler games at the time. I jusy couldn't admit it. Still the Amiga had a certain kind of magic that I didn't feel with any other machine ever again. Unfortunately the Amiga got lost during a move almost 20 years ago. Still sour about that.
Just micro at 9.25. I was in there every saturday in the 80`s and maybe when i bunked off school. Cool store. Small but packed with kids playing c64, cpc`s, nes.
Hombre wasn't PowerPC since it's Commodore's custom PA-RISC-based with 3D extensions and Hitachi PA-RISC CPU implementation. Hombre would be similar to Rendition Verite V1000 with MIPS CPU-based instruction set with 3D extensions.
Great video. It's interesting how the Amiga, with such great hardware, missed on some other fundamentally important computer technologies. While Commodore was still around and creating future platforms, there never seemed to be a laptop in its plans. Apple had the Mac Portable in 1989 and PowerBooks starting in 1991. Amiga's also didn't come with built-in networking capabilities. I think in 1988 ParNET came out that used parallel ports, but it wasn't part of AmigaOS. The Macintosh added AppleTalk a year after it was introduced in 1984 (i.e. in 1985) and although it could only support printers, they updated it in 1986 to add the ability to network computers and share files. The Sinclair QL included built-in networking back at its launch in 1984. So, although the Amiga had all these hardware advances, they seemed to have missed other important trends that today define the computer industry (connectivity and portability).
Commodore sacked/laid off ALL the Amiga 1000 designers except Jay Miner. Commodore engineers were not talented enough to improve the 1985 Amiga 1000 specs until 1992!. Meanwhile two of the original Amiga 1000 designers (R J Mical and Dave Needle) went on to do the superior sprite scaling Atari LYNX chipset (which could have been put into the A500 in 1987/88 if Commodore hadn't treated them like crap) and then a bit later they took what was essentially the £399.99 Acorn Archimedes 3000 and added their custom chip talents to make the 3DO console...a system 3rd only to the later PS1 and Saturn).
@@retrotronics1845 it's so interesting to hear the history of companies. I forgot how Apple almost went under in the mid-to-late 90's. With what the Amiga could do, you'd think they should have dominated but I'm sure there are so many different directions management gets pulled, and sometimes they just don't have enough technical knowledge to know what's good.
The downfall was a couple things. At first the downfall was, it's hard enough to try to introduce a new computer that is incompatible with existing software and hardware even if it is totally revolutionary. Then combine that with an unexpected competitor who's happy to lie about their competing machine claiming it's just as good, but sells for about half the price. Of course, anyone that knows computers knows this competitor is not trustworthy from his past work, but a lot of the potential buyers don't know that. I'm obviously talking about the Atari 520ST from former Commodore founder. The Atari ST only confused customers who were deciding between the Amiga and an IBM or Mac, and now aren't sure what to buy with this so called competitor that claims their just as good. People that knew computers knew that was far from the case, but it didn't help Amiga sales at all! Instead, most people ended up buying neither! The cheaper Amiga 500 helped sell the Amiga better to the masses, and ultimately the PC clones by 1990 or so after were taking over the market. People weren't buying either the Amiga or the Atari ST in big numbers, but in the USA as people "weren't dumb" eventually were buying the Amiga 10 to 1 over the Atari ST as the price gap was narrower, but still more expensive. But by 1990-1991, the future was clear. This so called Atari ST MIDI market was almost dead as soon as it started. Everyone was buying PC's. And the AGA Amiga's were too little too late to save the platform. But what would have happened if the Atari ST had never existed? 4 years of design on the Amiga, and the ST competitor was designed in just 6 months by a much smaller team. Sure it was junk in comparison, but I feel it greatly hurt the Amiga platform in the long run. Had it not existed, maybe the Amiga would have become a more viable market over the Apple Mac and offer a real marketshare vs PC clones. Cheap knockoffs suck sometimes, and hurt great products that were truly revolutionary. The Commodore founder did get the last laugh though with the Atari Falcon. They knew it would go no where against PC clones and no one would buy one, but 8 years after the state of the art Amiga they wanted the bragging rights to say.....we're better even though, it was totally pointless!
I remember the chaos in 1994 when Commodore folded, PC magazines in panic and us gamers just giving up and buying PC's, i bought my first IBM386 in summer 1994 after selling my A1200.
Commodore Amiga and even Atari were legendary computers ahead of its time. Better than Apple and PC in multimedia and processing power. But the industry standardized around PC after the clone wars made them cheap and available and windows gave it a GUI upgrade. Commodore could have survived like Mac as a niche.
@@jonfreeman9682i was still using my Amiga 1200 right up till 1999, till the battery leaked .I think honestly, PC was coming on in leaps and bounds by then. They were just such a pain to get any games to run on them. But the writting was on the wall, be honest I miss magic w/B and the Amiga o/s, it was such an elegant O/S. Though I still dabble now and then on emulators, I had just so much fun on the ST and then Amiga. Can't say I really had the same experience on the PC. Btw Amigas at one point could run Apple o/s (through shapeshifter) faster than Apple Pc's. They were incredible powerful machines for the day.
I remember os/2. To me the best UI version was the one from 3.0 (warp). Version 2.1 was also nice, but IBM killed the magic with 4.0 when that came out. To this day, I have yet to find something as clean as Warp-GUI. It was like Workbench done better. Kind of when MS had Win7 and then released Win8.
Warp was supposed to be NT Windows but M$ betrayed it. Got much love for Warp3D. GUI wise AcornOS and MacOS Classic are cleaner. Wb is ugliest but best done internally
@@RasVoja Warp is just the third version of Os/2, released after MS and IBM split from the Os/2 joint project. Reason why older version of Os/2 had the same style of GUI as Win3/NT-3,51. NT were born of what code MS took with them, after they broke with IBM. Warp is the name for Os/2 version 3. And I have to look it up, but I recall that Os/2 version 4 were also named Warp. But at this moment that I am writing this, I am not fully sure.
its a pitty amiga went bust , with new chipsets they might have still been here , but probably not as we knew it, great documenty ravi, very informative 👍
I love my commodore computers..c64c and amiga500 but there was no way commodore would of kept up with windows pc progression...the writing was on the wall for the amiga in the mid 90s.
I feel like people tend to look down on anything "old" @39:20. But the reality is that they have more soul and passion when compared in todays' souless and cold, shareholder ensh itification era.
I may end up getting an Amiga, but at least now I know the whole story after Commodore went bankrupt. That's what you get for messing with your own engineering department,in today's market I don't think Commodore would ever make a comeback it would be next to impossible.
True, there is little to no chance Commodore could make a comeback today with so many other big players in the market but it does make you wonder that with more competent management at Commodore, where could they be today, they might have been a big PC player or like Apple is now, after all, Apple was small at the time and Apple almost went belly up until Microsoft bailed them out. In truth, I don't think the Amiga was ever going to compete with the PC with how open it is and how many companies are involved but Commodore if it played its cards right could have been a big player in the PC space, maybe even the console space as well, but in any case, we'll never know.
@@paul1979uk2000 indeed not. but it's just amazing how long the Amiga survived through two buy outs. and even held long into the modern age. Unlike Amstrad, Acorn, Commodore, and even Mattel.
@@gamepad3173 What's remarkable about the Amiga is that even today, it still gets a lot of attention from fans, new software and hardware being made for it, it's like a machine that doesn't want to die and I have to admit, growing up with the Amiga in the day, it felt like the first true computer that could do more or less what a PC could do whiles also being a gaming platform, throw in multitasking and how flexible the Amiga was with software and hardware and the upgrades you can do to it. It doesn't surprise me that it still gets a lot of love even today and it's a shame that Commodore wasn't aware of what it had and been on the ball with the brand.
@@gamepad3173 Yep, it's too bad that a lot of the upper management and other companies that bought it out didn't realize what they had on their hands and now the Amiga is mostly own by smaller companies which seem to care about the Amiga more but they have far less money to really push the Amiga brand. Now the Amiga mostly lives through fans that grow up with the Amiga.
I loved my Amiga back in they and it is a true shame that it couldn't pivot like Apple did. The dedication to a dying CPU platform was ultimately the downfall.
The only technical problems with the Amiga were the bitplane concept (which created a massive performance bottleneck for FPS-style games) and the selection of SCSI increased the cost to the end user. Every other problem that affected the Amiga can be laid at the feet of Commodore's leadership, who needlessly and fatally delayed development of improved technology.
I'm not a big fan of spoken word music, but this is a really good DJ Mix. ;P (But seriously that's a great round up of all the apres-Commodore comings and goings. Fascinating stuff.)
And today its a Year 2024, People still run Amiga Machines, Some in FPGA, Some in emulators, Some on real or reproduction hardware. I have just finished building Denise board based machine - Equivalent to 500+ with 2 zorro slots and improved circuitry. Amiga Became Immortal, naturally it had to die first.
Amiga STILL would have failed with AAA Chipset as it was still too little too late. in 1993 it would had to have been a minimum of 3 times more powerful than a Playstation, 16 million Colors... and Abilities of a full computer right out of the box and look like a Mini CDTV with a Copy of an Super enhanced SCALA MM 900 or something. Audio and Genlock capture built in with S-Video and a Visualizer for Music built in like the 3D0. And most of ALL.... The exact 3rd Party game companies coming on board that made the games for other console. Capcom, Konami etc.
![[LIVE] : ONE ลุมพินี 88 | คู่เอก "ป้อมเพชร vs อัสลามจอน"](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/1ZqTVVbMgbo/mqdefault.jpg)
The Amiga story is a cautionary tale on how to take a superior product and just kill it. From Commodore mishandling the system and declining not to invest into any R&D to Escom just blundering their way through the systems abilities and mishandling every aspect of the machine is just depressing. The system was truly groundbreaking on many different levels. I’ll wager poor Jay Miner was turning over in his grave at how his creation, his visionary system was ultimately butchered. Such a sad waste. I am 52 and something of a collector. I own 11 Amiga systems. All A500’s. 7 not working but used as donors for the other 4. All are treasured, even the broken ones. It’s taken me 28 years to acquire them all. I’m proud to do my part to keep this marvelous system alive.
The industry was a mess, less informed and a lot smaller back then. Amiga forming out of disgruntled Atari employees speaks volumes. In today's environment and a massive market for tech, it would've done well as a niche product with its superior technology. I think the Sony Playstation changed everything just in time for unprecedented media hype and acceptance by non geeks. Then of course PC graphics cards. Today the Raspberry PI feels like a niche product but has sold heading towards 50 million units.
I don't think Commodore had a choice.... They couldn't invest because they didn't have the money. I like to think to the guys at the top prefer to live it up in style, while letting the employees suffer with what money they had.
Escom was unable to repair the damages Commodore did to the Amiga. It was too late to develop a a modular model that could compete with cheap PC clones. The development of an Amiga that could use PC expansions to some extent should have started at the time when A500 was released or even earlier.
@@mattx5499 True, but then its a lucky toss of the coin.., Would consumers buy it back in 1986? and would developers develop for it, or was it too soon? There would be 'pros' and 'con's there
@@mattx5499most likely the early 90s. Amiga pc expansion slot would've done well if they did a couple of years earlier. Sad how AAA, A+ and hombre were never expansion pc slot cards and even used in arcade boards.
That was a fantastic documentary !! Whenever I remember the Amiga, I get tears...my best days ever..so much childhood memories :)
same here, I had the A500 in my most "formative" teenage years
Such a terrible shame how Commodore flushed the Amiga down the gutter, after 30+ years it still makes me sad they really had gold in their hands.
For me there never was another computer that had the magic of the Amiga.
It's just amazing how the ingenuity of a few engineers who just wanted to build their dream computer can snow ball and produce such a massive impact on people. And businesses crumbling and fighting like little children for assets.
Still have my old Amiga 4000/40. Spent ~2 years writing game-making program in assembly, C= went bust when I was ready to put out the beta :/ Sad day. But I learned a lot.
I kept up the hope the Amiga would take off again but gave up by the year 2000.
I still have an Amiga 1200 that I bought in 1992 after selling my A500, recapped, 030@50 new case... etc but again the realisation that it was dead as per it's former glory set in 22 years ago for me.
A lot of things in this video jogged my memory from that time in so many ways. Excellent video 👍✊
Thanks so much! I too kept the faith lol
Also here in Denmark, we thought Amiga would return. But the hope died fully during the first years of WinXP. Only some 50 people still used Amiga on a daily basis. Perhaps more, but we were 50 members on a community website. AmigaOS 4 breathed more life into the hope. But eventually Linux have replaced Amiga for most former Amiga addict's.
The case/hardware etc will change overtime, to the point the Amiga is basically 'unrecognizable'
Its cool, but that's it. Now-a-days, you have emulation, which is an illusion... Its about as far from the hardware as you can get. :P
Next I will do a documentary looking at the os release and Amiga technologies products under escom. Here is a video of the Amiga walker prototype th-cam.com/video/KmBOAQjRb0E/w-d-xo.html
Hooray yes please
Great keep on all the way up to today!
I used to work for Escom, they started well, but grew far too quickly for their own good, and the purchase of "Amiga" etc was the point I did an "Aight, Im out"... Make a LOT of money fixing their PCs after they went under though, lol. EDIT : Also, Escom were in the UK BEFORE the purchase of Rumbelows, the purchase of that company is what broke Escom in the UK, they went under not long after the purchase.
Great to hear about it from the inside
The downfall of a company like this is often a concoction of not just missteps but also misfortunes. For instance, the decline of Amiga runs parallel to the fall of Motorola against Intel. Additionally, the lackluster marketing in America played a part. Moreover, the management's decision to cut down the budget of the R&D department resulted in lagging behind in technological solutions of the era, like the embedded network card among many others. This platform was unbelievable. I remember, an emulated Mac inside an Amiga was faster than the original Mac. Truly a shame about Amiga's fate. It stands as a testament that it's not always the superior product that succeeds, but the product with superior marketing.
this was awesome Ravi. more of these please
Thanks man! Means a lot coming for a great documentary dude like you. Glad you enjoyed it. lots more coming soon
Posted this message with AmigaOS 4.1... yep we are kicking and alive :-)
yeah garbage though isnt it not a real amiga.
@@jediknight2350 It's a real Amiga, same operative system, same code, same feeling.
@@Samo7900 its not a real amiga is a 68k cpu.
@@Samo7900 yours is an emulator .
@@jediknight2350 Absolutely not, Amiga hardware is not necessary 68k.
68k was merely the CPU they was originally running on, but even the old AmigaOS from Commodore can runs on an original hardware expanded with a PowerPC CPU
I've always wondered whether the Amiga could have survived longer as a commercial platform if Commodore was a better-managed company.
I know a lot of people would say an emphatic "yes" but I'm not so sure. Almost every non-Wintel platform save the Mac died in the 90s, and the Mac was a close-run thing. Seems like Commodore themselves had few ideas for the future of the Amiga by 93-94 and their Hombre system was simply a games console.
@woody-cool from what I've read, David Pleasance definitely had a more convincing business case than Escom. If they developed the Hombre technology they would have still have faced the challenge of being a small company competing with Sony's Playstation behemoth. And I'm not sure where they could have taken the Amiga, which desperately needed a post-AGA, post-Motorola development path.
Yeh I think if somebody had bailed out Amiga like Microsoft did with Apple maybe they would of survived. I am not that convinced that commodore uks plans would of worked tbh as commodores reputation was already shot at that point.
@@Djformula Your talking many years of disruptions at Commodore compared to a small disruption at Apple all due to the same thing..
Longevity matters too. Apple would have and more of a chance of being saved because the shorter time space they suffered, compared to Commodore.. In order to save the company, it would take Commodore longer to recover, and would customers 'wait' for Commodore ? Depends if a replacement got in at 'the right time'
More of a shaky ground than Apple was.
@@Jon867they will have to use windows, mac and linux os for their computers.
My Amiga days really were the greatest, the graphics, the music and some truly incredible games. I was an indy 500 and f1gp junkie. For me personally it was the golden age.
Triggering my '90s Amiga death spiral PTSD.
Well done! I found it interesting and informative. I was a Commodore computer owner (first getting the Vic-20 when I was a teenager, then later also getting getting a C=64 and Amiga computers), so these computers will always have a place in my heart. Keep up the great work.
The rise -- and specifically fall -- of Commodore is a lot more nuanced and multidimensional than the typical narratives discussed in TH-cam videos and presented by any one individual, insider or outsider. I would encourage those trying to understand what happened to read multiple perspectives from multiple Commodorians and analysts, Brian Bagnal's book series, Dave McMurtrie's interviews, David Pleasance's books, and the perspectives of those who were actually there, not people regurgitating Wikipedia articles or bits and scraps they found on the Internet for their retrogaming hobbies.
I have an Amiga 1000 and a 2500. The are both blown away by my new A500 Mini! I just can't believe how much they shrunk it! Great video!
Well, they didn't actually shrunk it, it's just emulating amiga in a complete different hardware, I have it running on my phone and it's a lot smaller, I have amiga running in my rg405m and it's even smaller
And, it could run on even smaller platforms...
And most of it is empty air inside. 😂
@@impactsuit9871Yeah it's essentially a raspberry pi in a fancy case.
Just saw this... Wow... an eye opener for sure... For me, Commodore will forever be stuck on the C64... I harbor so much respect for it. I love the amiga, wrote so many games for it... but the C64 will be my love. This documentary is superb...
Thanks so much man
In 1982 i came from the TI99/4A to the c64,and the c64 was mind blowing. It was the first machine i learned so much on,had a modem to call world wide,use Quantum Link, run bbs's, make games, have copy parties, build my own 2400 baud interfaces.. i felt so productive on it suddenly and i still have my original c64! CMD products really made it fly!
It's a real shame Commodore didn't release the AAA chipset. It would've kept them in the game.
Totally, it’s a pity commodore did not embrace their engineers more
@@Djformula The A600 killed Commodore..
Yeh, I think ultimately firing Thomas Rattigan the guy who managed to turn Commodore around and become profitable was the move that set them on the path to destruction. Killing the A500 while it was profitable and adding the A600 was indeed an insane move
@@Djformula Didn't that have something to do with using the new ECS chipset being a cost cutting exercise to replace the 500?
@@diablothe2nd894 I think the genesis of the 600 was the 300 concept, a cost-reduced 500 intended to supplant the C64. But for some reason mission creep entered the equation and the 600 ended up more expensive than the 500!
I think Commodore's downfall was much more than bad management (from across in the States.) They led the way as/when the Amiga 1000 came out, and then with the A2000 and A500. However, it wasn't until the early 90's that they refreshed the chip set and launched AGA based Amigas, by which time the PC standards (and flexibility with the means for easy upgrades) had taken hold.
Ideally, if the originally planned AAA chip set had been released early enough (in the very late 80's or very early 90's) rather than the late and cut-down AGA in the 90's, then that 'might' have made a difference.
However, I was a big Amiga fan/user at the time (A500 and heavily expanded A1200) and would have loved to have seen what Commodore could have brought out next.
Sooo...it was caused by the bad management.
They waited entirely too long to release the 1200, and that was one of the final mistakes. Instead, they wasted resources on resurrecting old technology. Commodore was an enigma-great engineers coupled with executives who couldn’t touch their asses given three chances.
@@RPKraul Their real downfall was getting rid of Jack Tramiel, their days were numbered after that.
@@RPKrauldon’t think engineers were that great. They kicked out all engineers talents that created amiga
My friend's friend had an Amiga 1000. I absolutely loved it.
Great video and thoroughly put together, Ravi! Back in the day there were many Escom stores in Germany and Austria and it was a very well known brand, so our hopes were high. Also much software development went on, phase5's versus Haage&Partner's PPC operating systems, Warp OS, the official(?) OS 3.5 and 3.9 distributions that hardly anyone ever used, AROS, and IIRC much later there was Amithlon, a kind of Linux base system that could run AmigaOS on an AMD Athlon based machine, and so forth. Difficult times! After trying to use the Amiga for as long as possible for internet and productivity, in 1999 I switched to Windows NT, then 2000, then XP, in fact circumventing Windows 95/98 completely. Weird. Your video brought back a lot of memories! 😉
Great to hear your perspective I can imagine there was a lot of excitement in Germany and Austria
@@Djformula Yes. Also, the dawning era of internet, (Amiga) forums and news sites made us believe the whole Amiga movement was bigger than it actually was (almost no market share). In the end there was only hope but no sustainable future.
What made the Amiga great is something that no other computer company has managed to grasp, even to this day.
Users want to have absolute control over their computers. They want to be free to customize the hardware and software in whatever way they want. That's why the Amiga brand had unshakable loyalty no matter who acquired it.
Apple and Microsoft always made the users do things "their way." The Amiga had the most robust, talented user community in history. I was proud to be a part of this, from the very first Ami-Expo in NYC. I was one of the first people to buy an A-1000, and I still have my A-2500. I'll keep it forever.
ATARI was always ahead of Commodore . The ST had some nice 3rd party hardware and software ahead of everyone . 3D software with 3D glasses and the built-in MIDI . And , in the end ATARI had the first personal computer with true digital sound . And the AMIGA had ATARI proprietary patents .
@@BruceStephanHell no, the c64 blew the atari 8 bit machines out of the water, even the later atari 8 bit machines. The ST was infinitely weaker than the Amiga, hell the famous quote about ST's were "It's a CPU, and not much else."
@@maxxdahl6062 The ATARI 8 bit blew away the cheaper 64 . The 64 couldn't handle STAR RAIDERS . And the AMIGA is really an ATARI computer . It's only a Commodore by name . It's full of ATARI patents like the controllers .
@@BruceStephan Didn't need star raiders, the 400/800 weren't too much better graphically or audio wise than a 2600. The C64 could pull off sprites almost to NES quality, and MUCH better audio with the SID chip, it blew the atari 400/800 out of the water. The only faults with the 64 were the slow disk drive speed, and the weak BASIC. But those could both be remedied, and it at least HAD basic in rom. the 400 or 800 you had to buy a BASIC cart, and the first one was utter crap too.
@@maxxdahl6062 wakeup from your Commodore wet dream🤣ATARI kicked the 64s butt ! Hahahahaha !!! And the AMIGA is an ATARI machine in reality ! Hahahahaha !
Fatastic documentary! Well done. This is the best and most thorough take I’ve seen on this sad (though fascinating) Amiga time period.
Great documentary work Ravi. I really enjoyed watching it. Thank you.
Glad you enjoyed it!
Ravi is the best Amiga historian!
Thanks a lot for that! Great video!
I was thinking of making an Amiga history video myself when I finish with my current series but there's no reason to do so anymore. :) And I would really enjoy that separate video on the history of AAA if you ever get around to recording it. :) It was a very interesting and ambitious plan for the chipset, first time it was conceptualised but sadly quickly left aside in favour of a crappy refresh in form of AGA.
Amiga’s reliance on Motorola doomed the company as Motorola could not or would not compete with Intel. Hombre being built on PA-RISC or PowerPC would have also doomed any chance for keeping the company afloat. I heard somewhere commodore was planning on running Windows NT on Hombre machines. So they also lost the OS which was a big part of the brand. Why buy an NT machine on such a niche platform? In 1985 the machine was brilliant and made MacOS/Microsoft products look like toys. Unfortunately the platform languished and soon the custom chipsets were what held the platform back. By the 90’s the Amiga was simply outclassed by Wintel systems. Sadly.
Bill Gates forced programmers in slavery and hired hitmen 😵
Hey just a nitpick, but the plosives are super hardcore in this and the sound is a bit poorly mixed especially on my monitors. I would recommended a decent deplosive, if you need help with your specific daw/editor I'm be willing to give some tips.
But for starters, EQ to cut out everything below 100hz, De-plosive, De-esser, and some mild compression.
Why below 100hz nopassband? Electrical grid noise?
@@mrkitty777 untreated room rumble
Really interesting stuff, thanks.
I remember, as an Amiga user, living through those years in the late 90’s as the Amiga suffered a slow, painful death. Traumatic. That dance thing was just ‘salt in the wound’ :-)
No one considered the basics. You need to make a computer that’s good, and sell it! This is what Apple managed to eventually get right after narrowly avoiding bankruptcy themselves.
Got an iMac in 1999.
Great video. 😃My obsession with computer graphics started on the A1000 - Amiga made it possible. I'll never throw away my A4000 Video Toaster/Flyer workstation that I used until '96.
Brilliant video and great research. Most of it I never knew as I jumped to PCs when Escom took over Commodore.
Thanks for this!!
Great roundup of what happened to the Amiga! Thanks for your hard work, Ravi.
What started the down fall of Commodore and this was revealed in a docoumentary on Commodore I watched on TH-cam within the past few years was this. In the Early 80's Jack Tramiel who started Commodore and pretty much owned it at that time got stupid and brought in a board of directors who knew nothing about the computer business. From what that documentary revealed said board started shoving product after product out the door, and not having a base of software for the computers. Jack had told them they can't be doing that, guess what the board of directors wouldn't listen, and kept this up in to the Amiga era. By 1982 or was it 1983, Jack Tramiel had gotten so fed up with what his board of directors was doing he left the company he founded from what that documentary revealed.
In 1983, he had the chance to buy Atari's hardware devision which he did. The key thing he failed to do, was also buy Atari's software devision which at that time was sold to a Japanese company, not sure which one off hand. Atari and it's computers also to die off at roughly the same time as the Amiga Computers.
I regret not keeping the Commodore 64C Computer I had, or the Amiga 500 I had. Honestly the Amiga Computers and the Atari ST Computers were great computers, which they were still around in modern versions, but that will never happen sadly.
Atari Arcade division is what you mean and they got sold to Namco... who then sold a portion of it to Atari of Japan calling themselves Atari Games with their home carts using the name Tengen.
a tear went down off my eyes... still dream of Amiga...
An amazing work to create document like this. Thank you very much.
Nicely done Ravi! It is so incredibly difficult to de-tangle the mess following the bankruptcy of Commodore.
Have a read of the two volumes of ¨From Vultures To Vampires¨ by David Pleasance, it helps to cut through some of the odd events that happened after Commodore went into bankcrupty.
Thank you for the great Video!
The often-asked question of whether the Amiga 1200 was released too late by Commodore and/or too poorly equipped was unfortunately answered by reality 30 years ago.
Of course, the AGA machines were a great leap forward and the Amiga 4000 in particular was definitely up to date and competitive in 1992 (e.g. with the Macintosh Quadra and the LC III) and even superior to conventional mainstream PCs (Intel 386DX, Intel 486DX and Intel 486DX2). So Commodore was actually well positioned in the high-end sector - also in terms of expandability.
What the managers and developers in West Chester completely missed, however, was that the home computer and gaming market had completely changed in the early 90s. Powerful PCs (Intel 386DX, 486DX with SVGA, XGA and Soundblaster) became affordable for the masses in the early 90s and they were superior to OCS/ECS Amigas in every way (though not necessarily in integration and workflow). The all-in-one wedge design home computers of the 1980s were increasingly becoming obsolete. PCs also became established in schools and universities, while at the same time IT lessons became more important and made it necessary for many young people to use a PC in their private lives.
On the other hand, the console market flourished and with the Sega MegaDrive/Genesis and the SuperNES (and also TurboGrafx-16), systems conquered the living rooms of middle-class families that were partially or completely superior to the Amiga and for which faster and more polished games were released.
I remember well, in my Amiga peer group (about 15 teenagers from high school and our suburban neighbourhood), the releases of games like Wing Commander (PC), Dune II (PC), Wolfenstein 3D (PC), the new generation of LucasArts and Sierra Adventures with VGA and voice output (PC), Sonic the Hedgehog (MegaDrive), Street Fighter (SNES), etc. were real shockers. Creative software also appeared on the PC and was superior to the OCS/ECS Amiga versions, e.g. Deluxe Paint (256 colours, VGA), various music trackers (16/32 channels), etc. It was immediately clear to us: Commodore had to act, otherwise the Amiga would soon be on its last legs. Most of us had also had our Amigas since 1987/88, which in 1991/92 increased the need and nervousness about the upcoming decision for the next computer.
First there was the CDTV failure, then Commodore announced a C65 and in early 1992 the Amiga 600 was released, making it clear to us (and probably millions of users worldwide) that the Amiga was not going anywhere! Commodore made the same nonsense that had led to the demise of its 8-bit line (TED series, C128) once again. Nobody was interested in a crippled version of the Amiga 500 at the beginning of 1992 and even less in a C64 successor, which would have been 8 years too late and was in the same performance range as the OCS Amigas!
When the Amiga 1200 was released at the end of 1992, my entire peer group, including myself, had already moved forwards to PCs (386s or 486s with hard drives, 4 MB Ram, CD-ROM drives and good graphics and sound cards) and we were enjoying the new games and programmes. As sorry as we were - actually we were more mad than sorry at Commodore - but it was the right decision, because also the Amiga 1200 was no longer up to date (wedge design, outdated CPU & old sound chip designed in the early 80s, too little RAM, no hard drive, no HD floppy drive, no CD-ROM drive,...). In addition, there were hardly any games that fully utilised the AGA possibilities, but only slightly improved versions of the OCS/ECS games. The old Amigas were still very widespread, and software developers no longer believed that the AGA Amiga could make a commercial breakthrough.
So what would have been the right time and equipment for the Amiga to survive as a successful mainstream product?
AGA should have been released at least a year earlier and the basic Amiga variant (A1200) should have been equipped with at least a Motorola 68EC030 (28 MHz), 4 MB Ram, an HD floppy drive, a chunky pixel mode, an updated sound chip and at least the option of a hard drive and a CD-ROM drive from the outset. Full compatibility with the C64 and Commodore's 8-bit series through virtualisation or emulation would also have been a nice-to-have and an important signal to the Commodore-community.
After that, Commodore should have launched the next Amiga generation on the market no later than 1994/95. A quantum leap to PowerPC or ARM processors and fully 3D-capable GPUs would then have been necessary to remain competitive. We will never know whether Commodore would have managed this. What we do know is that it became even more difficult to compete with the advanced Pentium PCs from the mid-90s onwards. Many previously well-established systems disappeared (e.g. Atari ST/TT, Acorn Archimedes, practically all competing European, North-American and Japanese home and professional computer systems) and even Apple was on the verge of bankruptcy. But that's another story...
Great job on this. Seen a bunch of docs, but the segments on the ESCOM & Gateway 2000 was very informative. Thank you.
Glad it was helpful!
Misses the last decades development of AmiKit/UAE, MorphOS, AROS and OS4, but generally very well done :) Interesting "Zombie" that Amiga :)
Nice 1 Ravi, plenty of great info i didn't know about, look forward to your next Docu , cheers buddy !!!
Bloody hell Ravi this is epic! Top work 👍
Thanks man means a lot coming for you
very good documentary - thank you for your hard work!!
Very interesting. Painful at the time being an Amiga fan, but fascinating to watch now.
A great video Ravi, you made it easy to follow and deciphered it well and must have spent a ;ong time down that rabbit hole!
Haha yeh was a deep dive
With Jim Collas we were on the verge of coming back, he got the love and spirit of Amiga embedded, but the powers that be axed it
Very informative, thanks Ravi!
Thanks so much! More to come soon.
@@Djformula Everyone loves ya! For great job!
PA RISC hombre with Windows NT ... That was not Amiga. A3000 DSP AGA was missed
I remember the CD32 was based on the Amiga 1200. Before thinking of a CD64 I think Commodore should have equipped both machines with at least 8 MB of Fast-RAM first and a full version of the 68020 CPU right from the start.
Some Fast-Ram really speeds up the CPU, because it has exclusive access to it, no need to share small and slow 2 MB graphics RAM (Chip-Ram) with the custom chips.
Great video, Ravi. With the right choices Commodore could've kept the Amiga alive and competitive for at least a few more years.
The general population had already moved away from Amiga by 1993 here in Denmark. Mostly teens, still keeping Amiga alive by then. But adults had moved to MS Dos based stuff at that time. I remember that I as a teenager back then, had problems explaining why OS/2 in 1992/93, were a better choice than Dos to all adults. And I had the same issue in regards to test versions of Win95 in the first half of 1995. I remember when I tried April test-release of Win95, and it hit me instantly, that this was the future. You know, when you have that "this is it" moment. I was unable to explain this to people, as they believed their admins at work more. Back then, admins were stuck up, and snobby old men, that only had their diploma of education to their name. Admins did not follow the world of new tech, and so, my mother did not believe me because the admin at her job were against the start button. Yup. The start button it self.
Commenting as I start watching. I just know this will depress the crap out of me as a long time Amiga lover. Went through an A500+ then A1200 before moving to PC in 1998.
Heh 35:52 in and a photo of someone holding a #Amiga sign, thats a throwback to the IRCnet days right there!
Did used to live on there back in the day too.
Still have my A4000/60 hidden away too.
Great work here Ravi! Well put together documentary 👏🏻 Thank you!
Beehive? Christmas tree? Nobody thought of traffic cone??
I got an A1200 in 1997 I think. My dad bought it for cheap in some random second-hand store. We even got an 030 accelerator and a CD-ROM drive that was housed in its own bulky case and connected via the pcmcia alot.
I was quite happy for a while as it was abig step up from my old IBM PS/1 but even then I envied the modern PCs with their way cooler games at the time. I jusy couldn't admit it. Still the Amiga had a certain kind of magic that I didn't feel with any other machine ever again.
Unfortunately the Amiga got lost during a move almost 20 years ago. Still sour about that.
Is it just me or is Commodore no longer keeping up with us, while we have been keeping up with Commodore for years?
Sadest story ever! Awesome documentary though! Thanx Ravi!
I actually loled when you said they made a preload deal with OS2
Just micro at 9.25. I was in there every saturday in the 80`s and maybe when i bunked off school. Cool store. Small but packed with kids playing c64, cpc`s, nes.
That song is better than any Trap crap that some people listen to.
Extremely thorough documentary once again.
This is such a well made documentary, thank you very much!
Glad you enjoyed it. More to come!
Amazing documentary,thanks.
Just found your channel, great video - very enjoyable! Thanks Ravi!
Hombre wasn't PowerPC since it's Commodore's custom PA-RISC-based with 3D extensions and Hitachi PA-RISC CPU implementation. Hombre would be similar to Rendition Verite V1000 with MIPS CPU-based instruction set with 3D extensions.
9:27 Just Micro in Sheffield. My brother worked there as his first job out of school in 1990.
Great video. It's interesting how the Amiga, with such great hardware, missed on some other fundamentally important computer technologies. While Commodore was still around and creating future platforms, there never seemed to be a laptop in its plans. Apple had the Mac Portable in 1989 and PowerBooks starting in 1991. Amiga's also didn't come with built-in networking capabilities. I think in 1988 ParNET came out that used parallel ports, but it wasn't part of AmigaOS. The Macintosh added AppleTalk a year after it was introduced in 1984 (i.e. in 1985) and although it could only support printers, they updated it in 1986 to add the ability to network computers and share files. The Sinclair QL included built-in networking back at its launch in 1984. So, although the Amiga had all these hardware advances, they seemed to have missed other important trends that today define the computer industry (connectivity and portability).
Very good point. There was a commodore LCD planned that got canned. I always think a laptop could of worked out well
Commodore sacked/laid off ALL the Amiga 1000 designers except Jay Miner. Commodore engineers were not talented enough to improve the 1985 Amiga 1000 specs until 1992!. Meanwhile two of the original Amiga 1000 designers (R J Mical and Dave Needle) went on to do the superior sprite scaling Atari LYNX chipset (which could have been put into the A500 in 1987/88 if Commodore hadn't treated them like crap) and then a bit later they took what was essentially the £399.99 Acorn Archimedes 3000 and added their custom chip talents to make the 3DO console...a system 3rd only to the later PS1 and Saturn).
@@retrotronics1845 it's so interesting to hear the history of companies. I forgot how Apple almost went under in the mid-to-late 90's. With what the Amiga could do, you'd think they should have dominated but I'm sure there are so many different directions management gets pulled, and sometimes they just don't have enough technical knowledge to know what's good.
@@8BitRetroJournal Apple was kept alive so Microsoft could say they didn't have a monopoly on excellence 😥
@@imalebowski now you mentioned,
The downfall was a couple things.
At first the downfall was, it's hard enough to try to introduce a new computer that is incompatible with existing software and hardware even if it is totally revolutionary. Then combine that with an unexpected competitor who's happy to lie about their competing machine claiming it's just as good, but sells for about half the price. Of course, anyone that knows computers knows this competitor is not trustworthy from his past work, but a lot of the potential buyers don't know that. I'm obviously talking about the Atari 520ST from former Commodore founder.
The Atari ST only confused customers who were deciding between the Amiga and an IBM or Mac, and now aren't sure what to buy with this so called competitor that claims their just as good. People that knew computers knew that was far from the case, but it didn't help Amiga sales at all! Instead, most people ended up buying neither!
The cheaper Amiga 500 helped sell the Amiga better to the masses, and ultimately the PC clones by 1990 or so after were taking over the market. People weren't buying either the Amiga or the Atari ST in big numbers, but in the USA as people "weren't dumb" eventually were buying the Amiga 10 to 1 over the Atari ST as the price gap was narrower, but still more expensive.
But by 1990-1991, the future was clear. This so called Atari ST MIDI market was almost dead as soon as it started. Everyone was buying PC's. And the AGA Amiga's were too little too late to save the platform.
But what would have happened if the Atari ST had never existed? 4 years of design on the Amiga, and the ST competitor was designed in just 6 months by a much smaller team. Sure it was junk in comparison, but I feel it greatly hurt the Amiga platform in the long run. Had it not existed, maybe the Amiga would have become a more viable market over the Apple Mac and offer a real marketshare vs PC clones.
Cheap knockoffs suck sometimes, and hurt great products that were truly revolutionary. The Commodore founder did get the last laugh though with the Atari Falcon. They knew it would go no where against PC clones and no one would buy one, but 8 years after the state of the art Amiga they wanted the bragging rights to say.....we're better even though, it was totally pointless!
Really nice one. It was a pleasure to watch. Thanks!
Many thanks!
Amiga is a life style.
I don't think you can even compare it to hard-core Apple nerds :)
I love my Escom Amiga 4000T. It sits right next to my PC.
Yes great Escom take is 060 Tower, coupled with Walker and OS 3.9 and OS 3.2 it was supoosed to be revival. Love Escom hate Amiga Inc and Hyperion
This deserves Popcorn and the works - well done Ravi - top content and research... roll on Amiga 37 Germany hey - Amiga is still alive...
I remember the chaos in 1994 when Commodore folded, PC magazines in panic and us gamers just giving up and buying PC's, i bought my first IBM386 in summer 1994 after selling my A1200.
Commodore Amiga and even Atari were legendary computers ahead of its time. Better than Apple and PC in multimedia and processing power. But the industry standardized around PC after the clone wars made them cheap and available and windows gave it a GUI upgrade. Commodore could have survived like Mac as a niche.
@@jonfreeman9682i was still using my Amiga 1200 right up till 1999, till the battery leaked .I think honestly, PC was coming on in leaps and bounds by then. They were just such a pain to get any games to run on them. But the writting was on the wall, be honest I miss magic w/B and the Amiga o/s, it was such an elegant O/S. Though I still dabble now and then on emulators, I had just so much fun on the ST and then Amiga. Can't say I really had the same experience on the PC. Btw Amigas at one point could run Apple o/s (through shapeshifter) faster than Apple Pc's. They were incredible powerful machines for the day.
I remember os/2. To me the best UI version was the one from 3.0 (warp). Version 2.1 was also nice, but IBM killed the magic with 4.0 when that came out. To this day, I have yet to find something as clean as Warp-GUI. It was like Workbench done better. Kind of when MS had Win7 and then released Win8.
But you needed a really strong PC with lots of memory to run it usable enough.
@@TheGraemi Warp 3 ran perfect on 4mb of Ram. I did it personally back then.
Warp was supposed to be NT Windows but M$ betrayed it. Got much love for Warp3D. GUI wise AcornOS and MacOS Classic are cleaner. Wb is ugliest but best done internally
@@RasVoja Warp is just the third version of Os/2, released after MS and IBM split from the Os/2 joint project. Reason why older version of Os/2 had the same style of GUI as Win3/NT-3,51. NT were born of what code MS took with them, after they broke with IBM.
Warp is the name for Os/2 version 3. And I have to look it up, but I recall that Os/2 version 4 were also named Warp. But at this moment that I am writing this, I am not fully sure.
Did I see that correctly, that the Amiga was released as a console ???
its a pitty amiga went bust , with new chipsets they might have still been here , but probably not as we knew it, great documenty ravi, very informative 👍
That was long very clear and incredibly good well done
Jesus i'm glad you pre warned us.... i couldn't get to the mute button fast enough at about 40:00 lol
I love my commodore computers..c64c and amiga500 but there was no way commodore would of kept up with windows pc progression...the writing was on the wall for the amiga in the mid 90s.
So basically it's Ixnay on the Hombre?
Nice I see what you did there
Having PC vendors selling Amiga is hilarious! But licensing scheme was good, too bad it was not linked with software companies to support clones!
I feel like people tend to look down on anything "old" @39:20. But the reality is that they have more soul and passion when compared in todays' souless and cold, shareholder ensh itification era.
Brilliant, Ravi. Thank you!!
Great work Ravi! Do you think Amiga and Commodore's future would have been better if Dell had won the 1995 bid? 🙂
Nice one Ravi - thanks for this :)
My pleasure 😊
Fantastic and in depth video. Bookmarking and sharing!
Thank you!
Me too!
Brilliant Video Ravi. Only a shame you missed out the PCI Amiga card story, it is in David's Books Lol
Ah yes, tbh I don’t know that much about it as not much out there. Mabye we should collab on a video about it!
@@Djformula It is a bit of a hidden story which could have changed the Amiga's fortunes.
I may end up getting an Amiga, but at least now I know the whole story after Commodore went bankrupt. That's what you get for messing with your own engineering department,in today's market I don't think Commodore would ever make a comeback it would be next to impossible.
True, there is little to no chance Commodore could make a comeback today with so many other big players in the market but it does make you wonder that with more competent management at Commodore, where could they be today, they might have been a big PC player or like Apple is now, after all, Apple was small at the time and Apple almost went belly up until Microsoft bailed them out.
In truth, I don't think the Amiga was ever going to compete with the PC with how open it is and how many companies are involved but Commodore if it played its cards right could have been a big player in the PC space, maybe even the console space as well, but in any case, we'll never know.
@@paul1979uk2000 indeed not. but it's just amazing how long the Amiga survived through two buy outs. and even held long into the modern age. Unlike Amstrad, Acorn, Commodore, and even Mattel.
@@gamepad3173 What's remarkable about the Amiga is that even today, it still gets a lot of attention from fans, new software and hardware being made for it, it's like a machine that doesn't want to die and I have to admit, growing up with the Amiga in the day, it felt like the first true computer that could do more or less what a PC could do whiles also being a gaming platform, throw in multitasking and how flexible the Amiga was with software and hardware and the upgrades you can do to it.
It doesn't surprise me that it still gets a lot of love even today and it's a shame that Commodore wasn't aware of what it had and been on the ball with the brand.
@@paul1979uk2000 indeed. even new cases are being put out like the Checkmate an inspired Amiga 3000 what later became the Amiga 4000.
@@gamepad3173 Yep, it's too bad that a lot of the upper management and other companies that bought it out didn't realize what they had on their hands and now the Amiga is mostly own by smaller companies which seem to care about the Amiga more but they have far less money to really push the Amiga brand.
Now the Amiga mostly lives through fans that grow up with the Amiga.
Great video Ravi. Thanks
Great documentary! At last i have better view in the stroy after big C bankrupcy. Also i have a question whats that song used in 8:10 Who were Escom?
I loved my Amiga back in they and it is a true shame that it couldn't pivot like Apple did. The dedication to a dying CPU platform was ultimately the downfall.
The only technical problems with the Amiga were the bitplane concept (which created a massive performance bottleneck for FPS-style games) and the selection of SCSI increased the cost to the end user. Every other problem that affected the Amiga can be laid at the feet of Commodore's leadership, who needlessly and fatally delayed development of improved technology.
Specially Gould and that indian scum Mehdi he hired is to blame for the fall
I don't know which was worse, the bankruptcy and carcass picking of Commodore or that Europop tune 🎶 🙃
I'm not a big fan of spoken word music, but this is a really good DJ Mix. ;P
(But seriously that's a great round up of all the apres-Commodore comings and goings. Fascinating stuff.)
Haha maybe I can sample it
It looked like Libby from Neighbours was watching that dance routine, just a lookalike???
Documentario eccellente!!!!
And today its a Year 2024, People still run Amiga Machines, Some in FPGA, Some in emulators, Some on real or reproduction hardware. I have just finished building Denise board based machine - Equivalent to 500+ with 2 zorro slots and improved circuitry.
Amiga Became Immortal, naturally it had to die first.
25:04 what movie is that?? Is that Simon Pegg and Justin Long? I'm not finding anything.
It’s called ‘Big Nothing’
@@Djformula Ah.. it was David Schwimmer. thanks!
Were you tempted to wait for your cold to pass before recording the audio?
danke für das tolle video
another great video, Ravi ...and such a nice thumbnail too ;)
The thumbnail is pure sexiness from Paul K
Thank you for a great video!
Amiga STILL would have failed with AAA Chipset as it was still too little too late. in 1993 it would had to have been a minimum of 3 times more powerful than a Playstation, 16 million Colors... and Abilities of a full computer right out of the box and look like a Mini CDTV with a Copy of an Super enhanced SCALA MM 900 or something. Audio and Genlock capture built in with S-Video and a Visualizer for Music built in like the 3D0. And most of ALL.... The exact 3rd Party game companies coming on board that made the games for other console. Capcom, Konami etc.
Microsoft simply let other companies do the hard work like making them do the hardware and drivers that's called divide and conquer.
AAA chipset is fail too ... I prefer Escom ways
See Apollo Team SAGA chipset, too bad they dont license it!
At least 2 times powerful than the ps1.
Amiga could have been like Mac