10 Amazing Commodore Amiga 1200 Facts

In this video we look at 10 fascinating facts and tantalising titbits of trivia surrounding the 32-bit Commodore Amiga A1200.
Video Links:
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[@joannelivingstone6656]

I got my A1200 with the Desktop Dynamite bundle that came with a massive 40mb hard drive and the 1084S monitor way back around 1996 - Got it out of storage and to this day (April 30, 2024) it still works.

[@systemchris]

Get the 1200 recapped due to the SMD slowly failing

[@ecdhe]

One of the reasons the AAA chipset never saw the day is that top management didn't want to invest in it. According to David Pleasance, at one point Commodore had 7 engineers working on the Amiga compared to 40 engineers working on the Commodore PCs.

[@TheLairdsLair]

That doesn't surprise me at all.

[@ecdhe]

@@TheLairdsLair David Pleasance certainly hasn't minced his words to talk about Commodore management. And speaking of which, according to his interview in the book "The Flame Wars", Mr. Pleasance was also able to sell a lot of Amigas in the UK thanks to a sort of "quota club" program for independent resellers (where the top-selling resellers have a free vacation in an exotic place - the first year was in Mexico). This turned many such resellers into Amiga advocates.

[@TheLairdsLair]

Another great story! I have met David a few times and interviewed him too, he's certainly not short of stories from those days!

[@TheLairdsLair]

In fact I'll tell you a funny anecdote, I was at the Retro Computer Museum in Leicester at an event with him where we were both signing some books and stuff and while we were there I called up Darryl Still, who was the Atari ST Product Manager and Marketing Manager at Atari UK and told him who I was with, everyone thought it was brilliant bringing them both together like that.

[@ecdhe]

@@TheLairdsLair that's really cool, thanks for sharing. It's great you got to talk to David Pleasance. Arguably one of the most (positively) important blokes at Commodore with Thomas Rattigan.

[@jkdsteve]

The fact that the sound was never upgraded for the 1200 was criminal. 4 channels of 16bit or 8 channels of 8 bit would've been great...but poor old Paula never got any love. It would've also cost pennies to add MIDI/wavetable too.

[@robertomarega6499]

I’ve used A1200 along with Scala and GenLock, greatest video title maker machine ever!

[@davidmylchreest3306]

I was so happy to get an A600 for my Christmas in 1992. Until I opened my first Amiga magazine and learned about the A1200...

[@systemchris]

Never realised the price jump from Escom... Raising the price in the future is crazy

[@stevenallan5822]

Now I have my mini Amiga to keep the retro thoughts alive.

[@spencerdavies4666]

Never had an Amiga (was an Atari ST/TT/Falcon owner) but recently found myself contemplating buying an Amiga 1200 so I can get that "experience".

[@TheLairdsLair]

I was/am an Atari ST guy, but I was lucky enough to pick up an A1200 a few years ago on Facebook Marketplace. I have no real nostalgia for it and don't really play on it, but it's nice to have in my collection.

[@madigorfkgoogle9349]

I would suggest using Amiga emulator, the collecting craze has hit A1200 already, it is not at Falcon level, but shelling out 400+€ for A1200 is not a fun for just few tries. I mean if you want to own just one Amiga in your collection, then the A1200 is the best pick, otherwise go emulator. Falcon was such a better computer... it is worth the premium even today.

[@spencerdavies4666]

@@madigorfkgoogle9349 Being honest, probably only pickup an Amiga if I saw a good one, cheap enough. I don't have the "emotional" attachment to the Amiga, unlike the ST range (hell, despite not being my first computer the ST was the first one I learnt to program on).

[@Meebzorp5200]

I had an Atari 520ST since 1985 and had my heart set on upgrading to a 486/33 in early 1992. Before I went all in on the PC platform, I had decided to see what the competition had to offer. The Falcon and A1200 were on the horizon but both looked dated and dead on arrival. It was an easy decision to go with the PC at that point. Atari and Commodore never really had a chance then, sorry to say.

[@TheLairdsLair]

Love the Bentley Bear avatar!

[@dgmt1]

The PC was evolving so quickly due to the sheer amount of manufacturers producing parts and systems that the other systems just had no chance to keep up. In 87-88 PC gaming was viewed by Amiga/ST users in the same way PC gamers viewed Macingtosh gaming. But suddenly in 1989-1991 PC games start reaching parity and then in 1992-1994 we get bombshells like Doom, ultima underworld, system shock, ultima 7 and wolfenstein that signalled the beginning of modern gaming era. I have a lot of fond memories of A500 games but you are completely right that commodore and atari really had no chance in 1992. They were never going to keep up with the PC and they left it far too late for a legitimate console market push.

[@vertigoz]

An Amiga as an all round computer was years ahead of competition... I mean surely we have those who love dos over anything else, still...

[@TheLairdsLair]

The original Amiga certainly was, but I don't think you can say that about the A1200.

[@thedungeondelver]

​@@TheLairdsLair By the time of the 1200 the engineers were so handicapped by the penny-pinchers that it's amazing that they got even AGA together. It's mind-boggling to think that a mere 7 or 8 years before, C= literally had the computer market pinned down. The C64 was everywhere, the '64 and 1541 were the lingua franca even here in the US, and lots of people eagerly awaited the arrival of the Amiga. But it was like C= was embarrassed to even acknowledge the damn thing; and when, stateside, you had companies falling over themselves to support it, C= turned their noses up time and again. I mean, they told NewTek if they (NT) wanted to sell "Video Toasters" (A2000s pre-equipped with a CPU & RAM upgrade, hard drive, and a Video Toaster card) they could buy A2000s at full retail price. When the A3000 came out, its flavor of Unix was so good that Sun asked C= for a license to build them and sell them as Unix workstations - C= refused. Some of the effects guys at Paramount were crazy about the Amiga and wanted to include one in Star Trek: The Voyage Home (the famous "Scotty makes transparent aluminum" scene), and they asked C= for one. Commodore refused and told them if they wanted an Amiga they could pay for the privilege. C= management was completely f'ed in the head.

[@dgmt1]

The Amiga excelled in graphics and sound during the 1985-1989 period but in all other regards PC clones were a better choice for general computing. Faster cpus, better keyboards, better graphic modes & monitors for productivity, cheaper ram, cheaper & faster storage, easier upgrades, and far easier repair/servicing. Really at its heart the Amiga was a gaming console and one of Commodores biggest failures was didn't market it as such from the beginning. Had they released in a console form factor (similar to the CD32) in 1985 with cartridges and sold optional plug-in keyboards & disk drives separately then Commodore may have taken a large portion of Nintendo & Segas market. Instead even by 1990 the writing was on the wall for commodore as you could get a fast 286 clone for the same price as a Amiga 500 and the A1200 had no chance competing against even budget 486SX or 386DX systems in 1992.

[@madigorfkgoogle9349]

you kidding, Amiga never was ahead of anyone, and certainly was never a all round computer. Amiga was a limited arcade game console with a keyboard. ATARI ST was so much better all round computer that it hurts.

[@danyoutube7491]

@@madigorfkgoogle9349 ...anyone who even reads about the Amiga's capabilities would know that's nonsense, not to mention anyone who actually used one.

[@haniqassim]

Commodore management should be taught in business schools as the “the most stupid management in business history”

[@TheLairdsLair]

Yep, right up there with Blockbuster Video!

[@madigorfkgoogle9349]

@@TheLairdsLair add the Budwiser to it...

[@arostwocents]

Sinclair? Dominates the European market and when it's time for a follow-up releases an identical machine with more ram and an added sound chip. No improved graphics, no removal of colour clash, no nothing. With the time that had passed, a much improved machine should have been able to be launched for the same price the 48k+ launched at. Combined with ruining the company with the ahead of its time/very dangerous c5

[@sandrodellisanti1139]

Ciao, i had my first Amiga 500 in late 1989, in 1993 my Amiga 1200, great times back then.. i loved to Play Superfrog, Rodland, Goal, Transplant, Super Skidmarks, Lotus Esprit Turbo/Jaguar XJ220, Super Wonderboy in Monsterland, Lemmings. Projectyle etc.. i've created my first Desktop Wallpaper and did my first Tracker Songs.. too bad what happened to the Amiga later.. many greetings from brunswick in germany and please stay safe 🙃 PS: loadwb..

[@zippofcy]

A got my Amiga 500 at Christmas of 1990. Got my 486 DX50 in the summer of 93. Finally i choose an A1200 as a graduation present in 1994 instead of a gold ring (i still hate jewelry to this day). I upgraded it with a HDD and a PC CD rom. I still got rid of it in 1995 and bought a 3DFX card for my PC instead. Reason: it was an A500 with 256 colors. Commodore didnt do anything after the C64 (they even bought the Amiga architecture). The A500 gave me so much fun while i was in high school. So many great games, from the classic Amiga games to Hunter (predecessor of MMORPGs) and FPSes (i forgot its name it was a one disk polygon game , u could move with the joystick and look around and shoot with the mouse, maybe its name was Trax warrior or something similar). It had good racing games (Lotus and Super Cars series) good RPGs (Eye of the Beholder, Elvira, Wizardry VI). The A1200 had only two great games: Ruff n Tumble and Banshee. Maybe Rayman too but im not sure about this one (it was 30 years ago anyway). Commodore should have bought the 3DO plans (its developers were the ones who developed the A500) instead making this dated CD32 and A1200 architecture.

[@bubbles581]

I went from a tandy coco3 to a tady 1000hd - an amiga would have left both of those in the dust i think. I would have loved an amiga back then. 386s were out when i finally got that 8088 so i was quite behind!

[@adamtimms6544]

The A1200 was originally invisioned as having a new sound chip (in addition to the High Denisity 3.5" floppy) but development dragged behind. I remember talks at time about input from Roland (the synthesizer company), but whether that's true? The A4000 was supposed to be a complete architecture redesign (by Haynie, modular, and processor independent). However, ultimately both computers were "pushed" out the door as 'ship it before it's too late'. Chips for the A600 were over-ordered, and A1200 far under. Result- those in the market looking for an Amiga hunted out A500(+) stock, others got A600s or went to console, only some got the 1200s they wanted. A1200 supply was further constrained by CD32s being dropped on the market (before games had been developed), and operating cash ran out. Escom was slow reintroducing the Amiga, never committed, and the technology was by then too old (for that role).

[@digitizer3627]

Thanks for the video on the A1200 which I knew so little about. I had an A500 and loved it so much. Thank you for your videos and bringing back the memories❤

[@tradinglive]

The A1200 and the Atari Falcon 030 are the best home computers ever made... I own them both, and I love them both... but if I had to choose one, the A1200 would be my choice... the reason is an A1200 with 8 MB of RAM has full access to Amiga's amazing software library... A1200 can play everything

[@madigorfkgoogle9349]

majority of ST games do run on Falcon now days, and the Falcon is so much better computer, not even a close comparison. Falcon was 1.5 gen ahead of A1200.

[@stephenwhite506]

You are wrong about the 16bit access. The CPU has full 32bit access to chip RAM. Check the schematic, the CPU's data bus D(31:0) goes through 391425 Budgie and emerges as the chip RAM data bus DRD(31:0). It is a full 32bit bus. The custom chips can also access the chip RAM as 32bit, even with burst mode support for sprites and play field memory fetches. It is the Atari Falcon that has its 32bit CPU restricted to a 16bit bus for ALL bus cycles. Alas, the blitter was still restricted to 16bit. They used the original NMOS Paula sound and floppy DMA chip, hence the no upgrade in sound or HD floppy. The problem was Commodore was too slow to upgrade their MOS chip plant from NMOS to CMOS. This was a contributing factor to their demise. It restricted the size their chips could be and the number of transistors the designers could work with. Commodore lost their vertical integration advantage that had worked so well with the 8bit machines and the original Amiga that could be implemented with NMOS. In the 32bit era everything was moving to CMOS and Commodore had to work with third parties like HP and VLSI (hence you find these chips inside the A1200 and the hesitation to upgrade Paula. The transition from being able to do everything in house to working with third parties is what lengthened the 1200's development and delayed its launch. The AAA suffered in the same way. If their MOS plant was upgraded to CMOS earlier, then it would have been a different outcome. The 020 was almost as good as the 030 as the difference is the MMU and the data cache. The MMU is not really used in the OS.

[@judewestburner]

Awesome video. Thank you

[@adamtimms6544]

Good video, but some small inaccuracies. Criticism of the use of the 68k20 CPU (68ec020). Yes, it was no doubt due to cost cutting, BUT it did produce a 32-bit architecture computer. Over in Atari land, their 68030 in the Falcon was partnered with a 16-bit data bus. A muddled timeline, the A600 came out first, followed by the A4000, A1200, and CD32. Commodore UK withdrew from bidding for Commodore assets due to their Chinese partners (NewStar) being poached by Escom. Escom were actually outbid by Dell, but their bid was subject to additional diligence (which all interested parties were supposed to have already completed), so was discounted. AAA wasn't abandoned due to R&D inadequacies. Rather, it was concluded to be too expensive to manufacture (required fast video ram). Hombre was never abandoned, it's design was promoted to potential buyers

[@TheLairdsLair]

I think you are being a bit picky here, I am not really sure what the first point you are making is as I never argued the A1200 wasn't 32-bit. I never even mentioned when the A600 was released, I just said it replaced the A500 and I said the A4000 was before the A1200 and the CD32 came after that, so again I'm not sure what I got wrong there. I said the following in the video regarding AAA "Commodore simply gave up, as it was costing them too much money", which is kinda the point you made. But thanks for the extra info regarding Commodore UK/NewStar.

[@adamtimms6544]

@TheLairdsLair That's the reason for saying "small inaccuracies"; it's indeed being "picky". As I said, you criticised the use and implementation of the '020, yet an '030 (at same Mhz) would have been little better, and in the Falcon where they did have an 030, it was held back by bus design. Re. AAA, they didn't give up because it was costing them too much money. They abandoned it because the design was always going to be too costly to manufacture for a games console or home computer. Subtle but important difference.

[@madigorfkgoogle9349]

and here you are the one who is inaccurate, while the Falcon has 16-bit data bus, so has the A1200. The chipset has 16-bit data bus access and the CPU has no MMU and full cache, so the Falcon is still faster with 16-bit data bus most of the time then A1200 with FastRAM expansion, the only time A1200 can use a full zero wait state 32-bit access to RAM, but that is restricted to CPU. Yes my friend, A1200 is crippled in very same way as the Falcon.

[@MarkTheMorose]

I read about the A4000 before the A1200, no doubt in Amiga Format magazine. The 4000 at the time would have been the 040 model. Shortly after the A1200 was announced, the A4000/030 model surfaced, and I decided to go for that rather than the 1200. I'm glad I did, and it became my favourite Amiga. There was some incompatibility with older games, some because of the new Kickstart version, and some because of the faster CPU. Equally there was a variety of fixes and get-arounds. You could hold down both mouse buttons on switching on, which gave access to a menu of options. One was to turn off various caches, and that fixed some games. Relokick was another solution, but an entirely dodgy one! A bootable floppy disk with a copy of Kickstart 1.3 on which was loaded into RAM and then soft-booted. That fixed several more games. It was my first computer that had a hard drive - 170MB, from memory - which was a revelation. It also had as standard a high density floppy drive that was back-compatible with regular Amiga disks, although it had to run the drive at half speed for high density.

[@jasonz7788]

Awesome thanks

[@Meebzorp5200]

Motorola based computers were fast approaching a dead end in the 90s. Apple was the other big Motorola platform but they were losing money big time in the 90s and were on their way out until Jobs returned. Very tough situation for Atari, Commodore, and Apple.

[@madigorfkgoogle9349]

I dont think that it was Jobs who saved Apple, in fact it was the demise of Commodore and Atari. Many Amiga and ST users didnt like intel, so later went to Apple camp.

[@Meebzorp5200]

@madigorfkgoogle9349 That's an interesting take. I think when he came back and helped create iPod and iTunes , that helped right the ship which bought them time to get the laptops and desktops viable. PC's had plenty of options and horsepower by the mid-90s which would have been a logical step for Atari and Commodore users to go to.

[@grinbrothers]

Learning more facts (and in-depth facts given the video length) about my very first gaming system would be a delight! 0:46 - Despite my love and nostalgia for the A1200, I did actually vote for the Acorn Archimedes in this poll. It's a lot easier to find facts and trivia about the Amiga (though I'm sure you'll have some surprises here; you always do) than it is the Acorn Archimedes. 1:25 - It is curious to imagine; if Commodore had managed to retain their grip on the PAL region market (would have required more R&D money and earlier releases of systems) in both casual homes and businesses, we'd have the odd interaction of US PCs and European Amigas having to interact on a regular (international/global) basis. I assume similar scenarios occurred with Apple Macs of one business having to interact with Microsoft PCs and such. 3:56 - I thought the CD32 was based on the A1200, with the CD32 being recognised as a 32-bit console. Does it have the same limitation in it's motorola basis or does the CD32 take the direction of the A4000 in that regard? 8:43 - So not entirely a financial situation... but still a financial reason as to why The A1200 didn't have the planned AAA chipset. I'm aware of the story of Commodore having reduced funds for their R&D team due to higher ups, so this is sadly not too surprising. 10:30 - Nice to see this prototype has been preserved and at a museum. I like the choice to make it white to fit with the rest of the A1200. 11:51 - Nice also to see Bubble And Squeak here; the first video game I ever played. 16:54 - Still loading them up despite the difference in format? That is interesting. 19:06 - Which isn't a bad idea, I recall Amiga paint and sound programs being quite popular, but the A4000 was already aimed at a productivity/creation market. An boy, Commodore really liked Oscar. 21:01 - I wonder what would have happened if Commodore UK had managed to acquire Commodore? They seemed very gungho about it with ideas in mind from the sound of it. From what I hear, Escom didn't do too well, closing only a couple or so years after the Commodore bid.

[@TheLairdsLair]

The CD32 has the same hardware issues as the A1200. I think Commodore UK would have been by far the best custodians for the company and probably could have kept them going a lot longer, but they would have had to move away from the Amiga and move into other markets too or they would have gone the same way.

[@zippofcy]

Escom was a scam company, i wanted to buy and Escom 486DX in 1993 but they couldnt even deliver it, i ended up going into a small computer shop and they built a 486 PC to me for the price of the Escom one, but with a Gravis Ultrasound instead of the Sound Blaster. I never heard from Escom ever again.

[@grinbrothers]

@@TheLairdsLair Thanks for the explanation. It certainly would have been an uphill battle, but I think them lasting longer than the Escom 1-2 years purchase was easily doable. In terms of other markets, could that have included the revival of the Hombre idea or do you mean markets aside from home computer and consoles?

[@TheLairdsLair]

@@grinbrothers I mean other markets aside from Amiga. Perhaps selling gaming focused PCs like Amstrad did or publishing games for other platforms.

[@grinbrothers]

I recall hearing that Commodore UK/David Pleasance had considered an Amiga Graphics Card for PC/Mac and the like as one of their plans for after they purchase Commodore. Something like that then?

[@CasperEgas]

Never had a normal Amiga. Have had a Commodore 64 since I was a small child. And I got an Amiga cd32 about ten years ago. Shame it is so difficult to find affordable games for it.

[@arostwocents]

Surely there's a way to load iso files?

[@DaisakuIkeda-nd6en]

Amiga 500 is fantastic machine, new models is good (2000, 3000, 4000, all new), so you speak.

[@ilkeryoldas]

Would be a nice video topic to know what happened after the trademarks were sold

[@TheLairdsLair]

I dunno, it's a very long complicated mess and I don't think its all that interesting, but I will consider it if enough people ask.

[@ilkeryoldas]

@@TheLairdsLair maybe just the last part with C64/Amiga Forever and where they are today

[@thedungeondelver]

It's so convoluted at this point you could probably put the C= logo on something and sell it, and defy anyone claiming to be the "real copyright holders" to show you legally where they are.

[@monolalia]

By “the end” (1996-1997) I, as a poor student, had an A1200 with a 68030, 16 MB Fast RAM, a cheap scandoubler/flickerfixer, a harddisk, and a small but pleasant Acorn multisync monitor. It felt like the *minimum* you needed to use the system without being driven crazy and actually looked pretty fancy next to my roommate’s (possibly even more outdated?) PC. (That and MagicWB and MUI and someone with internet or a CD-ROM drive for Aminet… seriously, that WB 3.x look with Topaz as a default? Awful!) In the PC world there seemed to be an understanding that you would need a graphics card and a sound card and a harddisk and whatnot but in the Amiga world the platform was judged in the state Commodore sold it in. It could have been so much less… shoddy. Edit: I just realised that was well into the Windows 95 years. Welp. I just ignored all that. I just didn’t want a PC.

[@arostwocents]

To be fair, a PC was never sold without a hard drive, sound card etc - if you bought a premade machine it came with everything (and a big stack of free games in those days) - people buying an Amiga were the same people buying a machine from PCWorld. You were not expecting to buy extra things with either.

[@soviet9922]

that comercial "better sound" what better sound if paula chip never changed from the amiga 1000 ? xD.

[@arostwocents]

You'll enjoy the sound more as the computer cost more = better sound

[@stuartgreen3081]

I think at that time, Commodore were stuck between a rock and a hard place. The PC Compatible market opened up the competition and prices came tumbling down to dominated the productivity market. The 16 bit consoles were absolutely dominating the games market. The A1200 wasn’t as good as either despite all its promises and therefore doomed to failure. I could see the writing on the wall for Commodore, even back then as an older teenager.

[@StuartQuinn]

Agreed. They could have shipped a '030, 1.44Mb floppies and all manner of small enhancements cut for cost saving and they still wouldn't have been able to compete against Sega/Nintendo/Sony on one side and Windows PCs on the other. And they would have gone bust sooner.

[@lurkerrekrul]

One very real, although admittedly small problem with the A600 was that the lack of a numeric keypad prevented you from playing some games. I can't name titles off the top of my head, but there are a few Amiga games which require you to use keys in the numeric keypad to control certain functions. Flight sims would be the most obvious case, but there could be others. I also have a very vague memory of some problem with early A1200 or possibly A600 floppy drives. It wasn't that they weren't HD, but rather something that didn't work quite right. Unfortunately, I can't remember exactly what it was and Googling doesn't help.

[@madigorfkgoogle9349]

almost all flight sims used numpad. Edit, the problem with floppy drives was with Escom made A1200, the drive was a standard PC drive and dindnt work right, it was said in the video.

[@erikhaugan3043]

Was that David Mitchell who voiced the ad for the Amiga 1200 competition near the end of the video?

[@rtid7538]

He'd have been about 18 then, so I doubt it! My guess is Colin McFarlane.

[@BigKelvPark]

My biggest moan about my 1200 is the power supply. Didn't have the nuts to power the accelerator or hard drive. Bought a reasonably cheap PC power supply, got the meter out to work out which pin was which on the amiga plug and transferred it. Job done abeit with an ugly metal box, flylead with a power switch on it. Games were no different to the 5/600 apart from the occasional colour palette. I used mine mainly for DTP as a side job. Much cheaper than the mac. When quark and photoshop was ported to PC and the wife needed a PC for work, I took the plunge. I miss my 1200 even though I bought Cloanto's Amiga Forever (which does a stirling job).

[@TheLairdsLair]

Wow, yet another thing Commodore effed up, the list seems endless!

[@adamtimms6544]

​@TheLairdsLair And yet, thousands of A1200 users happily used HDDs, CPU accelators, and other add-ons, all with the stock PSU.

[@madigorfkgoogle9349]

there was not just one PSU in A1200 production over the time, so some owners were lucky, some did not.

[@marcianzero_yt]

The CD1200 was supposed to be connected to the trapdoor. It would have needed to have an AKIKO chip that needed access to the Amiga bus. The pcmcia on the side wouldn’t have allowed for that.

[@piperatdawn7184]

I had a 1200. Promised so much and failed to deliver. All games by Bullfrog were pulled after they realised the processor and memory were insufficient to run the games at any frame rate. Most A500/A600 games worked however some weren’t compatible. Basically it was a half arsed expensive upgrade which failed to deliver. I sold it and bought a PC486 a year or so later. Verdict on the A1200=Crap

[@KarlHamilton]

AAA was working. There were some prototypes out there.

[@TheLairdsLair]

As I said in the video, it worked but was buggy and they ran out of cash trying to fix it.

[@KarlHamilton]

​​@@TheLairdsLairnah they just scrapped it cos the management were idiots.

[@FindecanorNotGmail]

The floppy drives in the Amiga were driven by the custom chipset, but AGA did not offer improved data transfer speeds over previous Amiga chipsets. The HD floppy in the Amiga 4000 instead spun HD disks at half speed so the chipset could keep up: it was an unusual type that was more expensive than the HD floppy drives in PCs of the time.

[@Meebzorp5200]

Probably corner cutting to keep the initial retail price as low as possible which created bottlenecks across the architecture. $599 launch price was too high a cost to stomach (no monitor) at the time. So it was a bit of a sidegrade for existing Amiga owners and people who were in the market for a 386/486 PC would have just figured to put the $600 towards a PC instead as the best investment.

[@adamtimms6544]

PC HD floppies could be easily adapted. Following the new OS support, a number of third-parties released HD external drives. You're right, they spun the drives at half-speed!

[@desertfish74]

Huh. I never knew this. I had an a4000. Interesting!

[@Waccoon]

There were multiple issues getting a 68030 to work with the A1200. The Alice memory controller is basically the same as ECS Agnus, and can't utilize synchronous and burst bus modes, and also limits CPU accesses to a rate of 1.79 MHz (every other memory cycle). Overall, it wouldn't perform much faster than an '020 without a second, dedicated memory controller and fast RAM. Bear in mind that just adding a fast RAM card instantly doubles the A1200's CPU speed. The CPU is absolutely starved for memory bus time. Also, the '030 data cache can't work with chip RAM, and the instruction and data cache inhibit lines are connected. The '030 cache is very badly designed and just too damn small. Without a proper memory controller to take full advantage of the '030 bus modes, using it in the A1200 made no sense. While the AGA chipset is largely to blame for bad CPU performance, I consider the '030 to be a pretty flawed design. The Atari Falcon also suffered from similar problems, as many of the '030 features simply did not work with a shared memory architecture and, like on the Amiga, had to be disabled in the Falcon. The A1200 couldn't use an ordinary high-density floppy drive since the old Paula chip doesn't support the higher data rates. The A4000 did have a high-density drive, but it was an expensive custom unit that ran at half speed, and had plenty of its own problems. It's a shame Commodore didn't swallow their pride and use an off-the-shelf PC floppy controller as a stopgap measure. While a disappointing purchase back in 1993, today I still use my A1200 regularly and have made contributions to WinUAE. It's my favorite computer of all time and I will never part with it. 8)

[@marjon1703]

Great retrospective of the out-of-touch decisions by Commodore upper management. I was an 'Amiganaut' and had two Amiga 2500's that were in constant use at my studio. I looked at the specs for the 1200 when it was launched and didn't bother. The 4000 was too expensive and PC's were getting powerful. In the end It was DOOM that pushed me to PC. Ho hum.

[@f.k.b.16]

2:54 is that the Killer Instincts logo that shows up when the dude blows up?

[@TheLairdsLair]

Great spot! It certainly looks like it!

[@MarquisDeSang]

The A1200 would run Imagine 2.0 and Real3D a little faster than the A500. And that is all that mattered to me back then.

[@desertfish74]

Many hours were lost in Imagine 3d 😅

[@pqrstzxerty1296]

It was Ocean not Commodore is why A1200 and A600 failed. Ocean wanted the A500Plus only, as it made money.

[@wimwiddershins]

I had an A1200 for a few years. Having a hard disk was a huge improvement over my A500. On the other hand, gaming on the A1200 was mostly unremarkable. I went on to get my gaming fix on PS1. The A500 will always be my favourite Amiga.

[@EmperorKonstantine01]

Well put together Video, Awkward how management At commodore Kept promoting the C64 because it was doing well in sales and had a cheap easy strategy to sell it through commecial outlets and get a small cut of the revanue, but never gave the Amiga the same recognition it deserved, Main engineers left the compamy and their positions, but knew way well that the poor Managemnt decisions made by commodore would leave them out of a job. The C32 and Cd 1200 was a Lauging stock and really embarresed Commodore. I nevert heard of any friends or anyoen buying an Amiga 4000, its was almost 4 x more expensive then a capabable PC at the Time Doing pretty much everythinh yiou wanted, again another unworthy investment and an embarresment by the Highs and Lows of Commdore, going from affordable to least affordable.

[@mark12358]

The A600 form factor, and the making it impossible to expand like the A500 was a very dumb as deliberate way to go by Commodore marketing, as they wanted some revenge against GVP (that was selling TONS of expansions hw for the A500 series) to cut them out of the expansion market. A suicidal move, it proven to be. Commodore management was made by absolute incompetent, I think now. And, today (April, 29) is exactly 30 years from the C= bankruptcy!

[@-Steven-]

I bought an amiga 1200 as an upggrade to my c64 also installed a hard drive inside so i could install workbench with a couple of addons like newicons and magic menu i also wanted to install my games to the hard drive to save the constant disk swaps when playing some games unfortunately because games companies were paranoid about piracy nearly all of them were not able to be installed meaning i was still stuck loading from floppy and as i had got it mainly for gaming i felt like i had wasted money which ruined the experience for me.

[@TheLairdsLair]

Wow, so the HDs were pretty much useless too then?

[@MarkTheMorose]

@@TheLairdsLair Only games like the bigger point-and-click adventures, or some simulators, typically allowed hard drive installation. There were a few others, but in the main it was not an option. This is what prompted WHD Load, which is now an essential in both real Amigas and emulation. Of course, it came along too late to make a difference in the Amiga's time in the sun. I understand that non-games software was more likely to allow HDD installation, I wasn't heavily into that sort of software so couldn't comment. Certainly, software which ran through Workbench would have allowed access to the HDD for user-created data files, such as pictures, music, and text documents, but anything that 'took over' the system by booting from a floppy rarely did.

[@madigorfkgoogle9349]

@@TheLairdsLair a lot of games used the floppy "defects" as a copy protection, so there was no possibility to install on HDD.

[@horrorlostplaces]

Why the 1200 failed ? I still use it today 😊

[@WasNotWas999]

I thought my 1200 was at the cutting edge at the time.. Now I find out it was junk and why fiendish freddys circus had 8 disks 😊

[@KarlHamilton]

It wasn't junk at all.

[@thedungeondelver]

@@KarlHamilton Cut down CPU, out of the box it was slower than the 3mb 14mhz (I had an AdSpeed CPU upgrade) A500 it replaced, for me. It wasn't until a friend gave me an 030 card - and I scrounged up $200 for 4mb RAM - that it was notably faster. But by then the 1st generation of FPSes were coming out and the 1200 was struggling to hold on to even the European market, it was dead here in the US.

[@arostwocents]

An issue was the max size of hard drive was 2gb!???? You think a lot of people had even a 1gb drive at that time? 😂 Drives were like 200mb on average, maximum.

[@pascalharris1]

First home computer with a GUI? So what was the Mac then? A sausage?

[@TheLairdsLair]

I never said it was the first home computer with GUI - I said it was the first with multi-tasking GUI, which it was.

[@madigorfkgoogle9349]

@@TheLairdsLair no it wasnt, so no SinclairQL?

[@TheLairdsLair]

The Sinclair QL didn't come with a multi-tasking GUI no. Can you multi-task using QDos on the QL, yes, is it a GUI based OS, no.

[@madigorfkgoogle9349]

@@TheLairdsLair many QLs were shipped with I.C.E. GUI in 1985, same as Amiga that is actually not full GUI operated as well.

[@Retrogameplayer8000]

What the hell is ham8 mode

[@meneerjansen00]

You forgot one fact, but it's not strictly 1200 related tho... The 16-bit games in the late 80's and early 90's were developed for the lowest common denominator: the Atari ST. Most games on the Amiga weren't as good as they could have been. That and the SnAFU of games developed for NTSC that leave a black bar at the bottom in Europe were the final nail in the coffin of the Amiga 1200. It couldn't beat the PC. The A500 however: that's another story. Noting could touch it in 1987. Not even that overpriced sh*te from Apple.

[@adamtimms6544]

I can only speak from a European perspective, but in 87-88 yes, games were developed for Atari ST first and ported to Amiga. However, as sales took off, European software companies quickly favoured the Amiga developing for it first. Indeed, the Amiga version of Deluxe Paint continued to be used for designing 2D graphics into the PC gaming era!

[@madigorfkgoogle9349]

this is a Amiga fanboy nonsense, if you see a game that is better on Amiga, its a clear proof of superiority of Amiga, if you see a game that runs better on ST, its a lazy port. In reality every modern game was better and faster on ST as the ST had higher computing power. Im not talking about outdated arcade pixel/scroll games... Also "that overpriced sht from Apple" literary stomped Amiga 500 to the ground in 1987...

[@NecroViolator]

I owned a Amiga 1200 with all the accessories !. So when Nvidia talks about Raytracing I laugh at them cashing in on something old as dirt, nothing new !. Commodores downfall was the greedy idiot CEO running the company. There is a video on Youtue about the downfall. Cant remember the name :(

[@desiv1170]

Wow. Not a 1200 fan, I see. So negative. Not even halfway in and I'm out I actually liked the 1200 then and it's my current daily driver Amiga.

[@TheLairdsLair]

It's completely impartial, it's just the facts, sadly there isn't a lot of positives when it comes to the A1200 because that was the period Commodore fell apart and died, I can't change history I'm afraid!

[@desiv1170]

@@TheLairdsLair Yes it is facts. But there are positives too, and those are also facts. It was accurate, but it was not completely impartial. IMHO. Have a good one. I like most of your vids.

[@desiv1170]

@@TheLairdsLair And I never said it wasn't accurate. Just negative. For instance you mention the Atari had gone 030 by then and the 1200 just had an 020. True. And Commodore did do that because the 020's were cheaper. True... What is also true? The 1200 was much less expensive than the 030 Ataris and the 1200 outsold them by quite a bit... I'm not saying the 1200 was perfect, just that it wasn't so negative as you seem to present it is. Again, not inaccurate. Just negative...

[@adamtimms6544]

​​@@TheLairdsLairThe A1200 was a solid machine, ask anyone who owned one. I'd agree that the coverage in this video is rather negative; more so than deserved. Few would argue that the A1200 was too little, too late. Ideally, it should have been released 2 years earlier, but Commodore R&D was starved of resources meaning that was impossible. As it stood, it was a good stepping stone (that faired rather better than the Atari Falcon), just a bit too late. After Rattigan, management was only interested in extracting the most money with smallest investment so the end was only a question of when, not if.

[@madigorfkgoogle9349]

@@desiv1170 A1200 was 100UKP less expensive then Falcon030 that was much more modern then A1200, I would not call that much less expensive... Of course A1200 outsold Falcon, ATARI CEO killed ATARI computer division two months after Falcon production begin and even hesitated to pay for the distribution from Asian factories to Europe. It was not that there was no interest, I remember you still could not get Falcon in UK half a year after its production stopped. Slightly better was the situation in Germany, but even there the availability started after the end of production, already. The A1200 is way less interesting then Falcon, I own both. Is it bad? No, but you really cant compare it HW wise to Falcon, at all.

[@icegiant1000]

:(

[@morenauer]

A well intentioned computer that was too little, too late. Lack of proper PC-level expandability, compounded with the rate of tech improvement at the time, when a pc would be old the time you bought it and completely obsolete within a year for games, means the A1200 got obsolete on launch. Sad. So many games back then started on the Amiga and I wasn't aware of that until much later (yeah, it was sad that so many VGA games for pc between 1989 and 1992-ish ran at 32 colors bc of being Amiga ports, but still looked great). I wish I had owned an Amiga back in the day but my older brother could already see the writing on the wall when he saw 286s in '90 and we went for a pc.

[@TheLairdsLair]

Spot on!