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They couldn't compete because the company was horrible run. They basically relied on chips designs from the early 1980s until 1992. They did almost nothing to i
by panick21_ 1mo ago
They couldn't compete because the company was horrible run. They basically relied on chips designs from the early 1980s until 1992. They did almost nothing to improve the product line while their CEO earn a huge amount. They fired the only decent CEO they had.
Had the taken some money in hand and all-in-one Amiga 500 SoC that had some sales potential left, and combined that with a next generation chip set that could run the modern games of the early 90s I think you would have had a great product.
And Windows wasn't really actually good at all the games media stuff for a long time. I think the home market for that stuff was possible if somebody grabbed it along with continuing some higher level unix, video, audio workstations.
And many people who had one liked it and grew up with it. There was a market there. Many switched to PC simply because the product was no longer competitive. Many had grown up with the Amiga 500 and were ready for an upgrade.
If you look at what Acorn achieved with even fewer resources and a much worse market position. Imagine and ARM chip with modern chipset but Amiga 500 compatible. Maybe along with non-backwards compatible console version like the CD32.
Would it have been a hyper-growth company, I don't really think so, but survive for the rest of the 90s was possible.
- Taikhoom10 29d agoYeah, the story of Acorn is ridiculous, and the fact that Intel rejected them, forcing ARM to make their own chips, really goes to show how things change.
- panick21_ 29d agoCan you give me source on that Intel story, I haven't heard of that. Intel generally reject anybody trying to do their own thing. Sun also wanted to work with them SPARC. Acorn eventually worked with VSLI Technologies, and that seems smoother then some of the earlier chip design technology cooperations I have read about. I am kind of surprised still how complex original ARM actually was compared to 'pure' RISC. It could be considerably smaller. And it kind of insane how a tiny company did this and produced something faster then the insanely complex 32 bit VSLI designs from DEC, Motorola, Bell. RISC really was a complete cheat-code in that period.