Amiga cases

A semi rant about Amiga cases...

Just recently acquired an Amiga 4000. I have always thought these cases were the cheapest looking of all the Amiga machines. It looks almost identical to a low profile Packard Bell case from the same vintage. Quite a step back IMO from the Amiga 3000. To me the 3000 was the best looking machine of the bunch, and the drive bays had good tight tolerances and the metal was a good sturdy thickness. The all-in-ones like the 500,600 and 1200 also had a fairly polished look, they look like quality pieces of hardware. The 2000? Well, it's a box...

And then there's the tower cases. Granted, I thought that most all full sized tower cases back in the day were monstrously ugly, but I think the 3000T and 4000T take it to the next level in ugliness.

What say you?

I kind of like the 3000T case, but it is just a 386 full tower case I think.

Best looking Amiga is the 3000D, the 4000D looks cheasy. I kind of like the A500 case too. Worst case is the A600, to me anyway.

You would think that with the prices they charged on the big box machines, they would have at least made the systems look like they were worth what they were charging. I mean, Macs at the time were outrageously priced too, but at least their cases made them look sharper.

It makes sense to use commodity PC cases for low runs of towers, especially when Commodore was about bankrupt when they came out.

The 2000 case might look like a box, but it is functional (could have used some more drive bays). You can stuff all kinds of Zorro cards, CPU card, ISA/Bridgeboards and a Video card in that boxy A2000. The 3000/4000D were much more limited in upgrades, heck most CPU boards won't even fit in the 3000D because of space. While most original Amiga users didn't need all that upgrade space, it does come into use for collectors now.

Unknown_K said:

It makes sense to use commodity PC cases for low runs of towers, especially when Commodore was about bankrupt when they came out.

The 2000 case might look like a box, but it is functional (could have used some more drive bays). You can stuff all kinds of Zorro cards, CPU card, ISA/Bridgeboards and a Video card in that boxy A2000. The 3000/4000D were much more limited in upgrades, heck most CPU boards won't even fit in the 3000D because of space. While most original Amiga users didn't need all that upgrade space, it does come into use for collectors now.

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That would be the case if Commodore wasn't trying to position themselves as a premium brand, particularly with the big box machines. Compared to a commodity machine they were astronomical.

The 2000 is pretty functional, I agree. My only complaint about it really is the way that the 3.5" drives mount. That is particularly annoying, and even moreso since the bezel comes off the front of the case with the lid, making it a tedious procedure to line up the drives with the front of the case.

As for the 3000 and 4000 real estate, I guess that's a function of just having a low profile case design. If they had made it wider to accommodate more slots maybe that would have been good.

In retrospect, it might have been a good idea for Commodore to ditch the whole bridgeboard concept. It's neat, but in practice I don't know how useful it really was. Performance of the PC side was compromised in most respects, it was expensive, transfers between sides was slow, and required the use of an additional monitor if you wanted anything more than CGA/MDA. I don't think the aftermarket bus bridge cards would only allow use of cards that didn't require DMA would they? I think the most real world use of them was simply to supply power to TBC cards and things associated with Video production.

Like most things commodore the bridgeboard made sense in the 80's when people needed to use Lotus 123 or some word processor that was PC only, so you used a bridgeboard. In the 90's Commodore never came out with a 386/486 Bridgeboard but they still had the ISA slots in their designs. Commodore never realy did upgrade the original Amiga design much over its life.

Everybody mentions video production and the Amiga, but very few Amigas were used for that function just like very few Macs are Final Cut Pro machines (campared to how many are made).

Unknown_K said:

Like most things commodore the bridgeboard made sense in the 80's when people needed to use Lotus 123 or some word processor that was PC only, so you used a bridgeboard. In the 90's Commodore never came out with a 386/486 Bridgeboard but they still had the ISA slots in their designs. Commodore never realy did upgrade the original Amiga design much over its life.

Everybody mentions video production and the Amiga, but very few Amigas were used for that function just like very few Macs are Final Cut Pro machines (campared to how many are made).

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Yeah, I could see how the 8088 card and *maybe* the 286 early on made sense since there were a few dos programs like Wordperfect and 123 that people used a lot. It made even less sense when Windows was on the scene I think since that would absolutely require the use of an additional monitor. Commodore did make a 386sx based card (see: A2386). Unfortunately by the time it came out though, the rest of the PC world had begun to move on to 486s.

I just don't get it... when the 2386 was released, the MSRP was around $1000. You could get a base model Compaq Deskpro with a 386sx the same year for $1100, and I'm sure that wasn't the cheapest option for a PC. On the one hand, if you want to run PC software, why would you run it crippled? On the flipside, why would you want compromised performance talking to PC cards from the Amiga side? Seems like the only advantage you get is it all fits in a single box. I'm sure the ability to stuff a bridgeboard in the 2000 case in the first place inflated the overall cost of the machine since the case had to be made bigger to fit the additional card slots, the PCB real estate, and the connectors are all not exactly cheap (from a manufacturing perspective). I think Commodore would have done better to ditch the ISA slots altogether and make the machines more affordable. People had to pay for the ISA card slots whether they used them or not, and it's not like they couldn't have put the bridgecard stuff sans ISA onto a single Zorro card anyway, and it would have been cheaper to make that since they wouldn't have had the bridge glue and/or they could have released a couple of sidecar mounted expansions to the card itself.

Alternatively, maybe they could have made the 2000 sans ISA slots, but included space for the ISA backplane in the case... and then made the bridge card and ISA backplane as a single piece that you would mount beside the Amiga motherboard and plug into a right angle Zorro connector.

One thing to keep in mind: Dave Haynie designed a lot of Amigas that "made sense" only to have them cancelled. Slimmer A2000s, an A3000+ that was really a better 4000, accelerated A2000s that weren't quite A3000s and cost less than either, etc. Commodore had very good engineers who got it, but middle and upper management often destroyed the designs by the time they got done with them.

And you're right, they didn't get the cost down quickly enough, which was part of what got them into the situation of not selling enough machines. How they could have done that is a very good question.

geoffm3 said:

A semi rant about Amiga cases...

Just recently acquired an Amiga 4000. I have always thought these cases were the cheapest looking of all the Amiga machines. It looks almost identical to a low profile Packard Bell case from the same vintage. Quite a step back IMO from the Amiga 3000. To me the 3000 was the best looking machine of the bunch, and the drive bays had good tight tolerances and the metal was a good sturdy thickness. The all-in-ones like the 500,600 and 1200 also had a fairly polished look, they look like quality pieces of hardware. The 2000? Well, it's a box...

And then there's the tower cases. Granted, I thought that most all full sized tower cases back in the day were monstrously ugly, but I think the 3000T and 4000T take it to the next level in ugliness.

What say you?

Click to expand...

I agree. Nobody mentioned the A1000. It was pretty nice looking for the time. It would have been awesome if it was black and the case was metal instead of plastic. Expansion possibilities weren't that great, but then again neither were later computers like the NeXTstation or SGI Indy. (...mmm... just imagine an AGA A3000+ in a NeXTstation case....)

Mr.Amiga500 said:

I agree. Nobody mentioned the A1000. It was pretty nice looking for the time. It would have been awesome if it was black and the case was metal instead of plastic. Expansion possibilities weren't that great, but then again neither were later computers like the NeXTstation or SGI Indy. (...mmm... just imagine an AGA A3000+ in a NeXTstation case....)

Click to expand...

Yeah, the A1000 had a nice case. I like how they put a pocket in the back of the machine for the 1300 genlock to fit, and a place for the keyboard to slide underneath when not in use. It's a shame that they moved the expansion bus connection from the right hand side of the machine to the left on the 500, but I guess a left-handed floppy drive would have been a little wierd for us right handers, and you'd probably rather have expansion stuff to the left to prevent it getting in the way of the mouse for the same reason. Aside from the rejuvinator, it would have been nice if someone had made a board to replace the DIP agnus with a square agnus so you could get more chip ram and switch between NTSC and PAL modes.