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Meanwhile....on the Amiga
- Thread starter Dronecatcher
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Perhaps it should have worded it better. It was a legitimate question. So… was the 500 the entry-level model to get people hooked on the platform?
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I think it was their first foothold - an affordable Amiga 1000 - they were huge in the UK, though I was oblivious at the time - too busy twiddling guitarsPerhaps it should have worded it better. It was a legitimate question. So… was the 500 the entry-level model to get people hooked on the platform?
No, the 1000 was first in 1985. Then, the 500 was released in 1987 with reduced features in order to go after the computer gaming market, I think.Perhaps it should have worded it better. It was a legitimate question. So… was the 500 the entry-level model to get people hooked on the platform?
Mkay...
So what features did the A500 lack compared to the A1000?
+ not having to boot from KickDisk
+ having 2x the memory with an easy upgrade path to more
- no external KBD
+ having a better KBD layout
+ the possibility (later) to go beyond 512k ChipMem
Sure we can nitpick about this and that, but the A500 was a cost reduced, modernised A1000 in a smaller case.
So what features did the A500 lack compared to the A1000?
+ not having to boot from KickDisk
+ having 2x the memory with an easy upgrade path to more
- no external KBD
+ having a better KBD layout
+ the possibility (later) to go beyond 512k ChipMem
Sure we can nitpick about this and that, but the A500 was a cost reduced, modernised A1000 in a smaller case.
Cool to see many still remember the 99/4a. I still have one and it still works. I think the TMS9900 was a semi RISC processor. But, good to see it run youtube.
This is correct, I recall a senior figure of Commodore UK announcing in the trade press the details of their product line-up for 1987 and describing the A500 as orientated towards the games market and the A2000 as geared towards professional users. I suppose its featured were reduced in comparison to the much more expensive A2000.
On a side note, there was a classmate on my Computer Science course who owned the A4000 during the mid 90s and it cost him £1,500 GBP: which was cheap compared to its normal going rate in the UK but still far beyond my measly finances back then.
Yup.
Amiga 1000 versus Amiga 500.
Back in the early 90s I was tempted to purchase an A1000 that I saw at a bargain price and was dissuaded from doing so by someone who was familiar with its shortcomings compared to later models. It might have been worth having though for the signatures of its designers inside the case.
There are upgrades and mods that will provide the A1000 with the Kickstart ROM onboard. Here's one:
No - I don't have a TI-99/4A either - I made the picture in Photoshop!
Not really.
The A2000B was based on the A500 (done by C= USA) and it cost reduced chipset after original A2000 (done by C= Germany) based on the A1000 turned out to be a pile of ####.
The A2000B had 1MB and a battery backed up clock which could be added to to the A500 at a reasonable price.
The A2000 ONLY made sense if you added expansion cards to it, otherwise it was a total waste of money.
The a500 had easy expansion via either the trapdoor or the sidecar.
Not cheap though. But *easy* enough.
Miss my A500, also miss the A1200 a friend upgraded to after I sold him my A500.
I mean the A500 was missing an IDE controller because... its design pre-dated IDE drives.
Much like the Mac Pro would be overkill for someone who only wants to browse social media occasionally, of course the A2000 would have been the wrong purchase for people who wanted a relatively low cost home computer or a games machine that could double as a home computer - which exactly the market that the A500 was pitched towards, as was stated by Commodore UK on the eve of its release.
As I mentioned in the post that you quoted from, the A2000 was an Amiga that was obviously intended for professional users and the people who purchased it did so exactly because it had the Zorro slots which opened up so many possibilities that were unavailable to the A500 (using the Video Toaster was one) and could house hard drives and additional floppy drives (or a CD-ROM later) all within one unit.
I'd much rather have had that set-up than the endless external units that were required with the A500 for additional FDD's, an HDD, SCSI, an accelerator etc.