ScuzzBlog: Diaries April 2025 Entry 12th April 2025: Post 1: Amiga 5.25 - Never exploited. Amiga 5.25 - Never exploited. It seems odd for a company with such a vast library of 5.25" disc software and 5.25" support applications there was not more effort made to bridge between Commodore classic 8 bit machines and the Amiga computer. From early interviews with Jay Miner there was a distinct view that the Amiga could run as an IBM clone and take advantage of MS-DOS based software. Whilst Transformer and the A1020 5.25" floppy drive were released at the time of the Amiga 1000 , to my knowledge, there was never any official Amiga software released in 5.25" disc format. You have to move forward to the various bridge-boards before you find any Amiga utilities on 5.25" disc. The design of the Amiga 1000 was very much a commercial style and the release of the A1060 showed an intent to maximise the MS-DOS based software through use of the emulator. And yet no efforts were made to port a C64/C128 emulator to the Amiga to take full advantage of the vast library of Commodore software. It wasn't that the Amiga wasn't suited to using the 5.25" drive, given that the drives generally could be used out of the box without any special software. The bigger box A2000 was fitted complete with 5 inch bay and was ready to accommodate the 5.25" drive linked to an internal bridge-board. A good number of pc emulator boards were made for the Amiga and yet little if no effort was made to fully exploit the MS-DOS and Commodore software. Makes no sense. I appreciate that the Amiga was primarily of its own world and the software support it enjoyed was purposefully designed for the Amiga architecture, but at a time when Amiga could have been developing a more serious business use to take on the likes of Apple there was good reason to use what ever tools were at your disposal. The early IBM clone and emulator aspirations died with the A1000 when operations from the original team ceased. Whilst the A2000 did support the emulation boards there never seemed to be any cross C64/C128 and Amiga team unified ideas development. The two departments ran quite independently. So was this a lost opportunity ? Amiga in the States was very much trying to push the big boxes but having little success. In Europe the A500 took on the C64 mantle as a home computer for the masses. There were efforts to incorporate PC emulator boards into the A500 but it was never supported by Commodore or exploited. I am not aware of any specific Commodore product that tried to emulate MS-DOS. Interestingly you can emulate pretty much any other platform on the Amiga, so having a C64/C128 cross platform application and support for the 5.25" disc drives in the form of an emulator could have given the Amiga a whole plethora of support software to take advantage of. Not sure whether it was just the old school at Commodore wanting to keep their 8-bit kit away from the Amiga world, or whether there was an arrogance on the part of the Amiga team. I do think it was a missed opportunity cus in truth it didn't have to be the case that Amiga was lowering their own bar but more a chance to enhance the original range with avenues into the newer more advanced machines. The two could have benefited and certainly given Commodore a healthy business machine angle exploiting a range that spanned back all the way to the PET. Dunno. Amiga 5.25 - Never exploited.

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Last updated 12th April 2025 2025

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