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.

The Commodore 64 was an enormous success in the US. I don't know how many were sold over seas by comparison. But 30 million worldwide? I have to imagine a big chunk were bought here. I have 4 presently. None work 🤣. I gave a nice 1 away 2 years ago. I'm coping well.

I was in Frankfort airport in 1986. Everything was sooo expensive. A bowl of soup was 6 usd as I recall. 2 - 4 times what it would cost here. We spoke to an an American man who emigrated or was working in Germany. It became obvious wages were also higher then in the US (not enough to cover the soup). I don't know what the secret was. German efficiency I guess. Achtung! And it is also part of my lineage.

I was nearly 19, working 36 hours in a ravioli shop making $3.40 an hour. I was driving a hand me down 1977 Chevy Malibu. I saved up enough in a few months to buy that Tandy 1000. Granted I was paying nothing at home, not even for food. But iinm I had no health insurance. I could have died. Instead I bought a computer. Computers help us stay alive.

Edit: when we finally made it to Yugoslavia, everyone was driving BMWs (ok not everyone) and we took a taxi ride in a Mercedes! Croatia was pretty low on the wealth index then. But there's always a 2nd side to every coin. Granted German autos were a lot cheaper anywhere in Europe. Yugoslavia's economy was boltered by German money to whatever degree. As Tito allowed them to seek jobs outside their borders. A significant accomplishment of Kennedy. Tito was communist but at least eventually became a more progressive one.

No. No way. Not even close. It all started with that brown donkey game probably written by Gates AND Allan. We're still haunted by the ghost of that game in 2023 in EVERY Microsoft product.

I've never even seen it. Anyone? All I know is on actual IBM 5153 CGA monitors (and also 5154s and 5175s? Not a given necessarily) brown was actually brown. On every other make of monitor it was just yellow. And to think IBM was gracious enough to allow us to display feces on our computer screens.

Scali wrote on 2023-09-28, 14:39:

It's a crazy myth that computers that have better sound and graphics are somehow NOT capable of running business software. It makes no sense whatsoever. And in the light of the capabilities of PC graphics today, it makes no sense to still believe in that myth, because the evidence to the contrary is staring you right in the face.

Indeed, it doesn't make any sense in hindsight. It was the poor marketing killed most of these non-IBM PC compatibles except Apple, which is still making Macs to this day.

kant explain wrote on 2023-09-28, 14:50:

Scali gaming interests are the monstrous unstoppable force behind especially hardware and software development in today's world. In the early 2000s hacker's found using a gpu to brute force password guessing was far fasterthen using the cpu. A phenomenon that cteated the cryptocurrency infrastructure. That's how I understand it anyway. You use your gpu to decrypt encryption codes. PC's are gaming machines these days. And graphic designers and whoever the hell else benefit from that.

Well, the current development in this era is ML/AI stuff and the industry outside of gaming and HPCs are gradually moving away from GPUs due to monstrous power consumption they have.

Never said Commies couldn't run business software. Or that you couldn't dabble in programming or graphics or even AI (was there ever a PROLOG for the 64?). You just had to do it in less then 64k with a ~1 mhz processor.

People are Sheaple. They'll go with the flow. Sometimes though it's the only thing that makes sense. It was obvious to virtually everyone that PCs would dominate. Commodore and Atari could have spent their r & d dollars grafting their designs onto pcs. I suppose that took a lot of skill, not always in heavy supply. And honesty. Macs survived because Apples, including the IIc and IIgs, both kicking computers in their own right, especially the IIgs, and the Macs also were adorable. You wanted to sleep with them under the covers. The original skinny Mac, Fat Mac, Mac Plus and SE were bad jokes in terms of hardware. They weren't color, which didn't matter that much because desktop publishing didn't need it, yet. But people fell in love with them nevertheless. The ST and Amiga were far far better. But they weren't cute enough. They also had that gamish look. The Macs were also modular, probably seen as a businessy/advanced feature.

Hell the only vintage pcs that work in my house are made by Atari, Canon, or TI (Portable Professional). The 30 or so others bit the dust years ago.

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 early 80s. Even early IBM PCs were shipped with only 64k. But 8088 code and DOS were a memory hog, so you needed more memory on a PC to do the same things as on the more efficient C64.

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.

Gmlb256 wrote on 2023-09-28, 15:25:

Indeed, it doesn't make any sense in hindsight. It was the poor marketing killed most of these non-IBM PC compatibles except App […]
Show full quote

Scali wrote on 2023-09-28, 14:39:

It's a crazy myth that computers that have better sound and graphics are somehow NOT capable of running business software. It makes no sense whatsoever. And in the light of the capabilities of PC graphics today, it makes no sense to still believe in that myth, because the evidence to the contrary is staring you right in the face.

Indeed, it doesn't make any sense in hindsight. It was the poor marketing killed most of these non-IBM PC compatibles except Apple, which is still making Macs to this day.

kant explain wrote on 2023-09-28, 14:50:

Scali gaming interests are the monstrous unstoppable force behind especially hardware and software development in today's world. In the early 2000s hacker's found using a gpu to brute force password guessing was far fasterthen using the cpu. A phenomenon that cteated the cryptocurrency infrastructure. That's how I understand it anyway. You use your gpu to decrypt encryption codes. PC's are gaming machines these days. And graphic designers and whoever the hell else benefit from that.

Well, the current development in this era is ML/AI stuff and the industry outside of gaming and HPCs are gradually moving away from GPUs due to monstrous power consumption they have.

There were MS-DOS compatibles like the DEC Rainbow that were much better than the IBM PC.

Unfortunately, the software world which followed IBM somewhat tried to compensate for the shortcomings of DOS and the original IBM PC.

That resulted in DOS programs which were by-passing BIOS and DOS functions.
Which in turn killed off high-level compatible PCs.

So it were the software developers who are to blame, the programmers.
If they had been more responsible, if they had followed the official programming guidelines, the PC history would be different.

The same fundamental problems suffered the Commodore computers, also.
C64 and Amiga couldn't evolve, because programmers used undocumented features - without providing a fallback.

This ignorance doomed those platforms, maybe.
There was no flexibility, no way of doing things in a hardware agnostic way.

For example, if the Amiga people had used Workbench/AmigaDOS functions more often rather than production of booter software,
changes on the underlying architecture had been more feasible.

And that's were the PC platforms had differed greatly, I think.
In the later years, PC applications were more flexible, used their own drivers to handle various different hardware. They had installers and could be installed on hard-disks.
That's another thing the Atari ST/Amiga had struggled with. Not all applications supported fixed-disks out of box.

But for a real PC, a hard-disk was mandatory. Even if it was an ancient 5 MB or 10 MB model (already out of production by late 80s, second-hand ware).

Then, flickering was an issue.
Hercules on PC or Hi-Res Monochrome graphics on Atari ST didn't hurt the eyes so much.
The text was easily readable, like on a glass terminal device.

That's why the advanced Amiga users had invested in a flicker-fixer/scan-doubler device, after all.
So they could use real VGA monitors! Amd muli-sync monitors, of course.

That's one of the reasons why the Amiga 2000 was a serious machine.
It had a video slot, which also could be occupied by a flicker-fixer.

That way, real work could be done. It was quite a step up over a generic video monitor. 😃

Edit: By "real work" I meant work on workplace, over long time.
In a way that wasn't too stressful for both eyes and arms/hands (keyboard, mouse).
A home computer can of course be used for same purpose in principle, but it's not as comfortable.

Edit: Edited. Picture added.

Edit: The Amiga developers weren't bad, by the way.
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.

The Tandy 2000 was both bios and dos function call compatible with ibm. I'm not sure any other computer was "that" compatible. But alas it didn't matter.

Someone needs to develop a cute box.to store a miSTer or whatever in. Something that'll run ST, Amiga, and Apple IIgs software.

There were also PC scan doublers. Not to eliminate flicker, but to be able to use a cga card with a 400 line monitor.

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.

Jo22 wrote on 2023-09-28, 16:25:

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 the 4096 available ones, and store the preferences on your disk, so they'd automatically be loaded on the next boot.

Jo22 wrote on 2023-09-28, 16:25:

There were MS-DOS compatibles like the DEC Rainbow that were much better than the IBM PC. […]
Show full quote

There were MS-DOS compatibles like the DEC Rainbow that were much better than the IBM PC.

Unfortunately, the software world which followed IBM somewhat tried to compensate for the shortcomings of DOS and the original IBM PC.

That resulted in DOS programs which were by-passing BIOS and DOS functions.
Which in turn killed off high-level compatible PCs.

All of this shows that IBM didn't have a clue about the consumer market. No wonder why they lost relevancy to the consumer's eyes in the long run.

So it were the software developers who are to blame, the programmers. If they had been more responsible, if they had followed th […]
Show full quote

So it were the software developers who are to blame, the programmers.
If they had been more responsible, if they had followed the official programming guidelines, the PC history would be different.

The same fundamental problems suffered the Commodore computers, also.
C64 and Amiga couldn't evolve, because programmers used undocumented features - without providing a fallback.

This ignorance doomed those platforms, maybe.
There was no flexibility, no way of doing things in a hardware agnostic way.

Having such compatibility layer while being able to upgrade the hardware (albeit in a brute-force fashion in the case of IBM PC compatibles) wasn't trivial task given that developers at the time wanted direct control of the hardware to avoid any overhead and be able to perform optimizations that weren't possible with hardware-agnostic routines.

Gmlb256 wrote on 2023-09-28, 17:08:

Having such compatibility layer while being able to upgrade the hardware (albeit in a brute-force fashion in the case of IBM PC compatibles) wasn't trivial task given that developers at the time wanted direct control of the hardware to avoid any overhead and be able to perform optimizations that weren't possible with hardware-agnostic routines.

Nah, they were just lazy, I'm afraid. Or a bit uneducated, inexperienced. 😅
A separate binary (exe, com) was all it needed.
Communication programs could at least have support for FOSSIL drivers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FOSSIL

Edit: And they were shortsighted, maybe.
They got a short time advantage by doing low-level programming for better performance, but hurt themselves on the long run.

Edit: On the bright side, 16-Bit platforms generally had an advantage over their 8-Bit cousins: a larger address space.
So everything wasn't so cramped and backwards compatibility could be mainted, while simultaneously adding new features.

The IBM PC platform did this by allowing Option ROMs, for example.
The Amiga platform had a similar ability to handle hardware expansion via auto-conf, I believe.

Anyway, that's a bit too off-topic now.
To go back to the C64, I'd dare to say that the Commodore 128D (DCR) was the best model, maybe.
Fir once, it looked modern and slick, like an Amiga 1000.

It had most bugs fixed, while providing all the features of a desktop PC.
Including a clean video output and a detachable keyboard.
And it was compatible with popular C64 hard/software.

All in all, it was something a business man could use for work without requiring a C64 and then being ashamed for using it.

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 exactly that on the Amiga.

Scali wrote on 2023-09-28, 17:33:

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 exactly that on the Amiga.

That's understandable and I guess we can't blame them, since they didn't know about the future and subsequent models.

Still, if they had at least used the operating system and had made use of separate files,
while relying on the OS'es filesystem routines, a lot of headaches in later years could been avoided.

Patch files for games could have been downloaded from BBSes or online services, for example.
Amiga magazines could have provided them on their cover disks..

Edit: On the other hand, I guess it's always easy to look back and say what went wrong. 🤷‍♂️
It's much harder to foresee future events and make the right decisions in the contemporary time.
That's why I think that my statements can merely be thoughts on the matter. They're no authority, of course, don't have absolute fact value.
It's more of a kind of truth finding process, of seeing things from different angles.

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

Yep. The 128d was a looker. Like the A1000. The later Amigas were horrid by comparison. Weeks after I moved into this house in late 97 a thrift store opened up. They had a 128d. $10. I passed and bought a TI Pro (8088). I should have bought both. I think they may have had an Amiga also (500 probably). Tons of disks. A small treasure trove. But collecting old computers wasn't much of a thing for another 5 years.

Did you say Mindset? Don' t leave that out of the conversation. It was an Amiga in terms of graphical capability, animation at least. With some honest degree of cga compatibility. Another gorgeous plastic clad unit. It's plastic is horrid and cheap though.

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 individual bitplanes anywhere on the screen, and place them anywhere in memory, with any pitch between scanlines you liked.
The blitter and copper could be programmed to move any kind of memory around, to draw lines and even filled polygons.

Scali wrote on 2023-09-28, 18:21:

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

Maybe, not sure. It's about having different standards, I suppose. 🤷‍♂️

The host/terminal relationships of the 1960s/1970s were quite similar to the later PC, too.

Just think of ATMs. Or booking terminals at the airports that the employees had used.
They had humble video, but good mechanical keyboards.

But back then, PDPs and other minicomputers were around.
Drum memory, too, before fixed-disks were around.

Here's an interesting history about early online services, which also covers home computer use.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_service_ … rovider#History

The US American PLATO system was ahead of its time, as well.
It's 1960s era graphics abilities were beyond that of early home computers, even.
A very rare and impressive view on the educated America, I think.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PLATO_(computer_system)

Last but not leadt, the Tektronix graphics terminals of the 70s could handle up to 4096x3072 resolution, even beating today's display technology.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tektronix_4050

Whoever was in contact with such a unit in the day surely needed some time to be able go back to a C64, Atari 400/800 or similar home computer. 😔

Edit: But back on topic. The C64 was very popular in my country back in the day.
Quite a few used GEOS to write letters and printed them using a needle printer.
The C64 was being sold via mail order warehouses like Quelle, department stores like Karstadt, discounters like Aldi, toy stores like Vedes or Toys'R'Us etc.

The Atari ST with its hi-res SM124 mono monitor was used for database work and wordprocessing, because TOS 1.4 and up could handle DOS formatted 720KB diskettes, making file exchange easy.
With the mono screen, it was similarly "serious" to a PC compatible with a Hercules monitor, maybe.

The Amiga was the closest to being on overall eyelevel to the PC, maybe.
A lot of higher end peripherals and products were available for both platforms in the mid-late 80s, and partially, easily 90s.

Edit: Edited. Typos fixed.