MikeB on 23 November 2008
@ crumas2
The Amiga hardware wasn't scalable Mike. Switching Amigas to use the same graphics hardware as a PC or Mac wasn't scaling Jay Miner's masterpiece of architecture, it was changing the architecture to the PC/Mac graphics architecture.
There was a ECS/AGA compatible better scaleable chipset under development at Amiga Inc. But Commodore invested into R&D far too little and far too late. However for the long run trying to do everything yourself would never have been feasible with the verge of many big heavily funded dedicated chip companies.
Dave Haynie although his Amiga 3000 design from 1990 was awarded as the best system available at the time, he really wanted to have this AAA chipset with Andrea, Linda, Monica and Mary custom chips in there to make the system as revolutionary like the Amiga was back in 1985.
'Commodore Engineering developed an entirely modular system of upgradeable pieces, consisting of the motherboard, Chipset module, host processor module and Open System Bus Slots. The system bus would also be processor-independent allowing it to be upgraded over time without any performance loss.'
'The Chip Module represented a move away from placing the custom chips on the motherboard. This would allow them to be upgraded as time progressed through simple plug-in expansion.'
Commodore management only acknowledged the importance of their Amiga division right before the end when nothing could be done about it (The Amiga engineers foresaw what would happen and stated in AmigaOS eastereggs that Commodore was killing the Amiga), the last sparkle of hope was the Amiga CD32 for them but with a big already produced US launch stock was blocked by court due to alledged patent violations, it was all too late.
