Re: C64 fans seem to me more passionate and committed than retro-computing fans

Posted on Today, 06:50

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So what you're saying is astounding. But maybe what you're saying doesn't apply to the 64. In fact it must not, as there's no way to upgrade a stock 64. There was the SuperCPU cartridge: https://www.c64-wiki.com/wiki/SuperCPU Gave you a 20 MHz(!) CPU and up to 16 MB of memory. There were some other …

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Re: C64 fans seem to me more passionate and committed than retro-computing fans

Posted on Yesterday, 12:45

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I guess "in the 90s" pretty much covers it: by the time such software was made available, the C64 was no longer relevant. Having said that, we did use C64s at our school, and there indeed was educational software for it. One thing I recall is that we used Logo, a graphical programming language on …

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Re: C64 fans seem to me more passionate and committed than retro-computing fans

Posted on 2023-09-29, 12:41

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I agree that the IBM PC and PCjr are somewhat unique, in that they seem to have a 'hidden' 8-bit home computer inside them: If you don't have a bootable floppy or HDD, it will automatically boot into BASIC. And when you add a tape drive into the mix, the experience is basically the standard late 70s …

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Re: C64 fans seem to me more passionate and committed than retro-computing fans

Posted on 2023-09-29, 12:23

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What would you do with a cassette port on a PC? Afaik the only software ever released on cassette was some diagnostics program. Other than that, yea you could load and save BASIC programs on tape. But other than the novelty of it being on tape, it's no different from using disk BASIC. The IBM PCjr …

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Re: C64 fans seem to me more passionate and committed than retro-computing fans

Posted on 2023-09-29, 12:04

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I've never heard of anyone who'd actually WANT tape on a C64. When I got my C64 in 1984, it was common to buy a package with both the C64 and the datasette bundled. A disk drive was more expensive than the C64 itself, so in those days, hardly anyone had one. A few years later, prices came down, so …

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Re: C64 fans seem to me more passionate and committed than retro-computing fans

Posted on 2023-09-29, 10:19

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But yea, that's a good point... A machine is more than just the raw specs on paper. The experience also depends on what software and hardware are available. Since the C64 was massively successful, there's tons of software and hardware available. Amiga also was reasonably successful, so a lot of …

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Re: C64 fans seem to me more passionate and committed than retro-computing fans

Posted on 2023-09-29, 08:07

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You have no idea what the graphical capabilities of an Amiga are, do you? Yea, on paper a PC may have the same amount of colours or resolution, but that doesn't mean much. There was the blitter and the copper, and the chipset didn't actually have any 'videomodes', you could enable and disable …

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Re: C64 fans seem to me more passionate and committed than retro-computing fans

Posted on 2023-09-28, 18:54

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Last but not leadt, the Tektronix graphics terminals of the 70s could handle up to 4096x3072 resolution, even beating today's display technology. Yea, but that's a storage tube, so basically your CRT *is* the video ram. There's no framebuffer, and no need to send the framebuffer to the screen at a …

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Re: C64 fans seem to me more passionate and committed than retro-computing fans

Posted on 2023-09-28, 18:39

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You have no idea what the graphical capabilities of an Amiga are, do you? Yea, on paper a PC may have the same amount of colours or resolution, but that doesn't mean much. There was the blitter and the copper, and the chipset didn't actually have any 'videomodes', you could enable and disable …

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Re: C64 fans seem to me more passionate and committed than retro-computing fans

Posted on 2023-09-28, 18:21

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In short, the PC mindset doesn't apply to other platforms such as C64 and Amiga.

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Re: C64 fans seem to me more passionate and committed than retro-computing fans

Posted on 2023-09-28, 17:33

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The Amiga actually had quite an advanced OS for the time, with hardware abstraction and dynamic link libraries. The problem was: game devs came from platforms such as the C64, where there was no OS, and they accessed hardware directly, for maximum performance and tricks. They just continued doing …

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Re: C64 fans seem to me more passionate and committed than retro-computing fans

Posted on 2023-09-28, 17:04

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The old Kick 1.x colour scheme of orange/blue/white was not only charming and fresh, but provided a good contrast on lower end monitors and TVs. Unfortunately, this changed in the 90s, with the introduction ogf that gray theme. Those were just the defaults. You could change all colours to any of …

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Re: C64 fans seem to me more passionate and committed than retro-computing fans

Posted on 2023-09-28, 16:59

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kant explain wrote on 2023-09-28, 16:19: I don't have a working C64 at the moment. I would like to see a comparison of 3d rendering or juat rotating on both computers. Something tells me it'll be much quicker on a pc. But what do I know. It's not. PC graphics is very slow and inefficient.

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Re: C64 fans seem to me more passionate and committed than retro-computing fans

Posted on 2023-09-28, 16:08

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That 1 MHz 6510 was almost as fast as a 4.77 MHz 8088. Early case of MHz myth. A 6502/6510 does a lot more per cycle than an 8088. See the MIPS ratings: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instructions_per_second 6502 at 1 MHz: 0.43 MIPS 8088 at 10 MHz: 0.75 MIPS And 64k was a WHOLE lot of memory in the …

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Re: C64 fans seem to me more passionate and committed than retro-computing fans

Posted on 2023-09-28, 14:54

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PCs have been gaming machines ever since Wolfenstein 3D hit the scene. That's roughly when the PC took over from other platforms like the Amiga and Atari ST as the primary choice for gaming. The end of the home computer. Now it's only PCs and game consoles. So 'today' started in the early 90s.

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Re: C64 fans seem to me more passionate and committed than retro-computing fans

Posted on 2023-09-28, 14:39

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Alien Syndrome was a better experience on the C64 then the actual arcade version imo. Probably owing to it's hardware sprites. No PC had them. Why? Becauae it was a feature of game computers/consoles. By that logic, PCs wouldn't have 3D accelerators either. But even the cheapest PC with the most …

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Re: C64 fans seem to me more passionate and committed than retro-computing fans

Posted on 2023-09-28, 14:36

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I'm merely a European, but I always thought that the Tandy 1000 was an US American phenomenon. Mostly, yes. Tandy was a brand of Radio Shack, and it was only sold through their stores. They did try to set up some European stores through InterTAN, but it never really took off. In the US, Radio Shack …

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Re: C64 fans seem to me more passionate and committed than retro-computing fans

Posted on 2023-09-28, 13:53

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No, in my experience a Tandy 1000 is certainly not 10x the computer a C64 was. Games on the C64 were generally far better than on any PC, because of better graphics, sound and controllers. You got smooth scrolling with lots of hardware sprites, and very responsive digital joysticks, great for fast …

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Re: C64 fans seem to me more passionate and committed than retro-computing fans

Posted on 2023-09-28, 08:58

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Back in the 80s, a Commodore 64 *was* a 'real computer'. It wasn't a toy, it could do the same things that all the other options on the market could do. It was just one of the cheapest options, which made it by far the most popular. I learnt a lot on my C64, like learning to program in BASIC, and …

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Re: C64 fans seem to me more passionate and committed than retro-computing fans

Posted on 2023-09-27, 18:15

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Yes, C64 had their own BBS systems, like C-Net: https://commodore.software/downloads/category/468-c-net

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