kant explain wrote on 2023-10-03, 23:43:

The console was 600 usd in 1982. The 1541 was 400. And slow as molasses. It seems to me they could have spent a wee bit of money refining the firmware in it's 13 years of production. And they sold millions.

Hi again, I think that's because of VC-20 compatibility.
That machine was very very humble.
But it's chassis and the keyboard could be reused for the C64.

The serial i/o had to be manually done, by bit-b***ing data back and forth.

That's why some C64 owners used a parallel connection between C64 and 1541.

However, the parallel connection used a pin that on 1541-C model was used by the phototransistor for the light barrier.

The model C firmware used it to detect track 0, so that on power-on, the drive head wouldn't collide 40 times in a row with the chassis.

Unfortunately, Commodore users valued speed over quality, so the light barrier was disabled and the former firmware was installed.
That way, the parallel connection could be restored.

Speaking of modifications, some Commodore users did a memory expansion on their 1541 drive.
That way, it could hold a whole sector in memory. This was required to duplicate some floppies, I vaguely remember.

From a tinkerer's perspective, the C64 must have been fun, I suppose. There always was something to fix or improve.
Maybe that was one, if not the most entertaining "game" that could be played on the platform.
Like optimizing of coffin.sys/autoexe.bat on PC.

Link about the trouble with 1541 performance:

https://theindustriousrabbit.com/blog/2021-04 … anaging-bosses/

Of coirse. People are entitled to like, use, collect, extend ... whatever they want. But pointimg out or simply acknowledging strengths, shortcomings, applicable uses ... shouldn' t ruffle feathers. Nothing is perfect, nothing is ideal for every situation.

Hell I'd love to have a Mimic. And that's funny as I habe extremely little interest in the Apple IIs. I do like the IIgs though. And have very superficial reasons for liking the IIc.

I loved my Fat Mac back in 94-95. Macs were far more interesting when the II came out.

kant explain wrote on 2023-10-04, 01:23:

Of coirse. People are entitled to like, use, collect, extend ... whatever they want. But pointimg out or simply acknowledging strengths, shortcomings, applicable uses ... shouldn' t ruffle feathers. Nothing is perfect, nothing is ideal for every situation.

I tend to agree and this personal blog article about the C64 that I've found here seems to confirm the situation about back then (it's rather positive).
Or at least it tells how things were being perceived by the collective memory of that generation (this was a bit before my time, so I can't say much here).

https://homecomputerguy.de/en/2021/08/20/my-commodore-c64/

On the other hand, objectively speaking, the C64 seems like a very buggy machine all-in-all.
That's at least how a non-nostalgic person like me sees it.
I mean, the countless shortcomings literally pop into my eyes each time I try to be forgiving. 🤷‍♂️

For example, when I told my father about the 1541 floppy drive and its shortcomings first time, he couldn't stop laughing in tears.
And he's been into computing since the late 1960s, if I'm not mistaken.
At university, he occasionally had worked at Zuse relay electron valve computers at young age and saw computing as a whole progressing over time.

Then, there are other issues that are purely unnecessary, I think.
Like the old "elephant foot" power supply which was known to overheat or output overvoltage (which could will damage a C64 at some point) .
Seriously, this makes me wonder how many bed rooms catched fire because of a C64. 😔

And that's something I don't understand.
How could a company produce something with so many quirks and get away with it?

I mean, producing a weak product is one thing, but carelessly risking the life of customers through low manufacturing quality and profit maximization, especially if the product ends up in the hands of kids? 🙁

My poor Sharp MZ-700 is equally old, but never needed servicing, the PSU voltage is spot-on. Even the ribbon in the datasette unit still works.

So yeah, that's why I initially said I have a little bit of a love/hate relationship with the C64.
I value what it stood (stands) for and I do try my best to respect the users and try to care for their feelings.
Because, some of them did accomplish quite amazing things with this little machine! ^^
It was used in schools, too, even for making school news papers.

I think it's positives outweigh it's negatives. For what you jad. I know next to nothing about TI or Atari 8 bitters. Tje CoCos were sad imho. Fairly well made. Interesting from the viewpoint of 6800/6809 kit. So despite wanting an Atari 800 real bad, just something I haven't put emphasis on, I have no basis for comparing the C64 to anything in it's class. The 128 was a more comfortable machine. That damned breadbin is just so loveable.

I don't know what the Amiga 500 went for. Or if it was even available. I think it was. But it's interlaced video was a deal breaker. Tte Atari ST was just so elegant by comparison. High res non interlaced video should have been present on the Amiga. Go figure.

Max Headroom wrote on 2023-10-03, 23:03:

Yes, it was. 😀
We're talking about PCs, not about consoles. And there were quite a few years, I mean the early 90s, when game creators were releasing their games (for PCs) designed for „lowest common denominator” (cheapest VGA) — so almost every game was using mode 13h. It was quite enough to offer a game with quite attractive graphics — and AdLib/Soundblaster sound and gameplay made the rest.

Oh please, I know all that, obviously.
My point is:
Just because that's what the hardware looked like in those days, and that's what games had to make do with, doesn't mean that was the best possible technical solution.
You see the difference between what you're saying, and what I'm saying?

Max Headroom wrote on 2023-10-03, 23:03:

3dfx and then era of all that „heavy” 3D games (featuring textures, raytracing, that whole technology), that require accelerators — and which lasts until today — is somewhat different story. It's next stage of the games' evolution.

For PCs yes, but other computers and game consoles had been using that approach since the late 70s, as I said.
PCs were never designed for games, graphics, video, sound or anything, remember? They were generic boring business machines. They were catching up technologically.

kant explain wrote on 2023-10-03, 23:17:

The point IS the C64 DOESN'T have such facities.

It's just software. Simons' BASIC offers you this, for example. Gives you the PLOT command to draw pixels in cartesian coordinates, among many other things.
And this BASIC extension was written by a 16-year old.
You're simply wrong.

kant explain wrote on 2023-10-03, 23:43:

I hate to bring it up again. But by 1985 you could have a Tandy 1000 or 520st for the same.

By 1985 a C64 didn't cost anywhere near what it did at release in 1982.
Obviously as technology progresses you get more value for money, but it's ridiculous to hold that against machines that were released earlier.
Especially the C64, whose popularity was a direct result of it offering the best bang for the buck.

Jo22 wrote on 2023-10-04, 04:13:

On the other hand, objectively speaking, the C64 seems like a very buggy machine all-in-all.

Thing is, you could work around the bugs, so in practice it didn't matter.
Back in the day we all used a cartridge. Initially the KCS Power Cartridge was very popular in my area, later the Final Cartridge III took over.
Such cartridges would have a ROM that would install some tape and disk routines as soon as you power on.
So you had your turbo tape loader available immediately, as well as faster disk routines.
The Final Cartridge III especially had really fast disk routines, so the slow 1541 issue was solved.

It seems like a bit of a stretch to say that Commodore was deliberately putting lives (especially children) at risk. Surely, by now there'd be a whistleblower who would have come forward? Given the number of units sold, there's probably have been lawsuits over negligence. Their boneheaded decisions are well documented, but putting children at risk isn't something that is mentioned.

Jo22 wrote on 2023-10-03, 21:22:

Anyhow, the Amiga was at least on eye level with the PC. Even a bit after VGA debuted (Amiga could do HAM mode graphics in still […]
Show full quote

Anyhow, the Amiga was at least on eye level with the PC.
Even a bit after VGA debuted (Amiga could do HAM mode graphics in still mode, ~4096 colours).
Especially the Amiga 2000 (and 1500) had been used by professionals.
For drawings, for digitizing (frame grabber), for painting etc.

Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_j48O50crQ&t=130

Yup, there you can see how it can be used for 3D modeling and animation, because it has fast hardware linedrawing.
Things that you'd normally need an expensive CAD workstation for, or a PC with an expensive professional graphics card.

Another thing the Amiga could do, that PCs still can't do to this day is genlocking:
You could hook up the Amiga to an external clock source, so that you could synchronize its video output with another video signal. This would allow you to overlay Amiga graphics on broadcast signals and such, using it as a character generator and other fancy graphics.

If you want to do that on a PC today, you need a special card like a Blackmagic DeckLink. It has its own onboard framebuffer which can be synchronized externally, but you're basically bypassing the entire PC's video circuit.

Jo22 wrote on 2023-10-03, 21:22:

Ironically, it's exactly the A2000 that had been neglected or even hated by the Amiga community, maybe.
It was considered being too IBM, it was not a wedge design, it was seen as being too ugly..

I don't think the Amiga 2000 was hated... It was just very expensive and rather clunky. So it was designed for a much smaller market than the Amiga 500 was.
I believe an Amiga 2000 was about 4 times as expensive as an Amiga 500.
And unless you actually wanted to use its special features, like installing a bridgeboard, or some graphics board or whatever, what was the point, really?
If you were just going to run standard Amiga software, it wasn't any better than an Amiga 500, because it used the exact same CPU and chipset. Same features, same performance, same everything.

Scali wrote on 2023-10-04, 06:48:

Oh please, I know all that, obviously. My point is: Just because that's what the hardware looked like in those days, and that's […]
Show full quote

Max Headroom wrote on 2023-10-03, 23:03:

Yes, it was. 😀
We're talking about PCs, not about consoles. And there were quite a few years, I mean the early 90s, when game creators were releasing their games (for PCs) designed for „lowest common denominator” (cheapest VGA) — so almost every game was using mode 13h. It was quite enough to offer a game with quite attractive graphics — and AdLib/Soundblaster sound and gameplay made the rest.

Oh please, I know all that, obviously.
My point is:
Just because that's what the hardware looked like in those days, and that's what games had to make do with, doesn't mean that was the best possible technical solution.
You see the difference between what you're saying, and what I'm saying?

I didn't write that „it was the best possible technical solution” — what I wrote was: „there was a time when this „raw power” was more than enough” (in the context „PC vs Amiga”, consoles are different story).
You see the difference between what you're saying, and what I'm saying?

Max Headroom wrote on 2023-10-03, 23:03:

3dfx and then era of all that „heavy” 3D games (featuring textures, raytracing, that whole technology), that require accelerators — and which lasts until today — is somewhat different story. It's next stage of the games' evolution.

For PCs yes, but other computers and game consoles had been using that approach since the late 70s, as I said.
PCs were never designed for games, graphics, video, sound or anything, remember? They were generic boring business machines. They were catching up technologically.

…but we were talking about „gaming on 'boring generic business machines' vs gaming on the Amiga” — consoles, things like SGI Octane etc. are different story, out of scope.

Jo22 wrote on 2023-10-04, 00:37:

kant explain wrote on 2023-10-03, 23:43:

The console was 600 usd in 1982. The 1541 was 400. And slow as molasses. It seems to me they could have spent a wee bit of money refining the firmware in it's 13 years of production. And they sold millions.

Hi again, I think that's because of VC-20 compatibility.
That machine was very very humble.

No, it was misunderstanding between Commodore engineers — the serial lines needed for fast transfer have been removed by some moron, who — looking at the schematics they sent to him — asked: „what are these lines for? They seem to be redundant, so I'm removing them”, instead of calling the office to clear his doubts. And after that damage had been done — meanwhile „crippled” PCBs were already in production — there was no time to revert it, even that they discovered that unfortunate „mod”. It was already too late.
There were also problems with hardware bug in VIA6522, which had been discovered very late. That's why in 1571 they replaced VIA6522 by CIA6526.

C-64 wasn't as hopeless as you write in your posts; the sales volume deny your opinion. If it really was that bad, they wouldn't sell millions of C-64 unit (and quite a big number, also counted in millions, of C-128).

AppleSauce wrote on 2023-10-03, 23:03:

Because even when you hit the 90s and pcs did have S3 cards and sound blasters and voodoos which are arguable equivalent to an amiga "custom" chipset just more modular and lets face it the rest of the hardware the cpu and sn74 glue logic chips are basically off the shelf , people still don't feel warm and fuzzy for 486s or pentium of that period vs their commodore systems.

You know: maybe it's a matter of „personality”; that C-64 was quite particular product: created and manufactured by one specific company, it had particular look, it had its particular name — so the term „Commodore 64” meant something quite specific.
And what is „IBM-compatible PC”? It's rather an „idea of personal computer”; it was sold under thousand of different names, it was manufactured by hundreds bigger and smaller companies, it had no particular look unlike C-64 or Amiga, it could be „anything”!

Max Headroom wrote on 2023-10-04, 08:41:

You see the difference between what you're saying, and what I'm saying?

What you said was:
"Why not, if that works, and one can achieve interesting effects using that? The creators of Amiga designed copper, blitter etc. not because they had too much free time — but exactly because they didn't have at that time that mentioned „raw power”! If they had that at their disposal — would they really create all that blitters, increasing Amiga's final price?"

To which I responded that yes, they would definitely create the blitter and copper.
Because that's exactly what we're doing to PCs today: we add special graphics hardware, because the additional cost is negligible and the benefits are obvious.

You then somehow started to move goalposts, and now you claim you ONLY said that "raw power was more than enough", but that only looks at what hardware was AVAILABLE, as I already said.
What that boiled down to was that a cheap and simple PlayStation console could do the same kind of 3D games that you'd need a pretty high-end 486 or Pentium for on PC.
So clearly the "final price" argument was not in favour of the PC. Raw power is more expensive than custom hardware, not cheaper.
Heck, the main difference between an Atari ST and an Amiga is the lack of custom hardware on the Atari. The ST actually has a slightly faster CPU, because it runs it at 8 MHz, where the Amiga is at ~7 MHz.
Look how that panned out: the ST was barely any cheaper than the Amiga, so the additional hardware cost wasn't much of a thing. At the same time the custom chips made the difference. The Amiga was a much better computer all around. It was better at games, video, music, and its GUI was far better as well, because the blitter could hardware-accelerate it. This also meant that you could do pretty acceptable multitasking on a 7 MHz 68k. The CPU wasn't tied up drawing the GUI, unlike on an ST or a Macintosh for that matter.

An approach that became standardized on PCs with "Windows accelerator" SVGA chipsets in the early 90s, a few years before more advanced 3D acceleration became standard.
So apparently the PC market didn't think "raw power" was the answer. They agreed that adding blitters, line drawers etc was the way to go, even if initially they were rather primitive, so they were mainly useful for a GUI, but not quite up to games yet.
Because even the most high-end raw power CPU was choking under the load of a GUI in a high resolution with truecolour display.

Max Headroom wrote on 2023-10-04, 08:41:

…but we were talking about „gaming on 'boring generic business machines' vs gaming on the Amiga” — consoles, things like SGI Octane etc. are different story, out of scope.

Again, only because on PC these options weren't AVAILABLE at the time. But they became available shortly after.
It seems you either completely lost track of the conversation halfway, or you just deliberately moved the goalposts.

Scali wrote on 2023-10-04, 09:48:

What you said was: "Why not, if that works, and one can achieve interesting effects using that? The creators of Amiga designed c […]
Show full quote

Max Headroom wrote on 2023-10-04, 08:41:

You see the difference between what you're saying, and what I'm saying?

What you said was:
"Why not, if that works, and one can achieve interesting effects using that? The creators of Amiga designed copper, blitter etc. not because they had too much free time — but exactly because they didn't have at that time that mentioned „raw power”! If they had that at their disposal — would they really create all that blitters, increasing Amiga's final price?"

To which I responded that yes, they would definitely create the blitter and copper.
Because that's exactly what we're doing to PCs today: we add special graphics hardware, because the additional cost is negligible and the benefits are obvious.

„What I said” can be seen in my former posts — maybe you misunderstood that, or maybe indeed I could express my thoughts better.

Max Headroom wrote on 2023-10-04, 08:41:

…but we were talking about „gaming on 'boring generic business machines' vs gaming on the Amiga” — consoles, things like SGI Octane etc. are different story, out of scope.

Again, only because on PC these options weren't AVAILABLE at the time. But they became available shortly after.
It seems you either completely lost track of the conversation halfway, or you just deliberately moved the goalposts.

Not just because of the lack of availability — but the price factor also was important; Amiga lost mainly because 486 PC fitted with SVGA and Soundblaster was „good enough” even not offering HAM mode and other wonderful things — still being much cheaper. Do you really think they were unable to design VGA with, say, sprites, raster-interrupts and even blitter? That these things were available only for Commodore? No — they just made a calculation „what is really needed for today, and what not so much”. Then they designed VGA standard. Of course it wasn't designed for gaming console — but for a business PC.
3dfx was quite expensive when it first appeared on the market (I, for one, never bought it; for gaming time that mentioned „raw power” was enough and I wasn't eager to spend quite a handful of bucks on 3dfx) and it took some time (and cheaper solutions) when 3d acceleration found its way as a component of (the better ones) VGA.

Max Headroom wrote on 2023-10-04, 10:05:

„What I said” can be seen in my former posts — maybe you misunderstood that, or maybe indeed I could express my thoughts better.

This was a direct quote from your earlier post: Re: C64 fans seem to me more passionate and committed than retro-computing fans
Are you now denying you actually said it?
Clearly what you initially argued was that if you just have a fast enough CPU, you wouldn't create blitters and such, because they would just add to the price.

Max Headroom wrote on 2023-10-04, 10:05:

Not just because of the lack of availability — but the price factor also was important; Amiga lost mainly because 486 PC fitted with SVGA and Soundblaster was „good enough” even not offering HAM mode and other wonderful things — still being much cheaper.

Amiga lost because they hadn't developed the platform since 1985. The AGA update in 1992 was too little, too late.
That's a mangement problem, not a technical problem. It wasn't the architecture of the Amiga that failed, it was that it wasn't kept up-to-date, so yes, at some point there will be a point where even a "bruteforce" system can do what your custom hardware from 1985 could do.

Max Headroom wrote on 2023-10-04, 10:05:

Do you really think they were unable to design VGA with, say, sprites, raster-interrupts and even blitter? That these things were available only for Commodore?

Yes, IBM couldn't do that. At least, not within a reasonable timeframe, at reasonable development costs.
Have you ever used an actual IBM with VGA? Their design was incredibly slow. Almost immediately, clone VGA chipsets offered faster implementations at lower cost, with extra features.
IBM just didn't have the in-house expertise that many other companies did, that made a big difference.

Max Headroom wrote on 2023-10-04, 10:05:

3dfx was quite expensive when it first appeared on the market (I, for one, never bought it; for gaming time that mentioned „raw power” was enough and I wasn't eager to spend quite a handful of bucks on 3dfx) and it took some time (and cheaper solutions) when 3d acceleration found its way as a component of (the better ones) VGA.

Yes, but 3DFX did full 3D acceleration, which was still relatively new at the time.
But before that, we did already have Windows accelerator cards that did what the Amiga did: hardware blitting, line drawing, sprites (mouse cursor) etc.

OK, „you know better” 😉 — no problem to me.

Pretty sure if you had a 486 or an early Pentium, you would have had a Windows accelerator card, as they were very common by then. Especially S3 chipsets were very popular in those days.
My 486 had a Diamond SpeedStar PRO VLB, not exactly the greatest Windows accelerator ever, but it did have a hardware blitter.
My Pentium had an S3 Trio64.

It doesn't that matter what was in my own PC. What matters, is — what I already said — that the game creators were designing, during quite a few years, their DOS games for the „lowest common denominator” (ordinary 128 KB not accelerated VGA) mainly using mode 13h.
They had no idea, what kind of cards their „target” could have in their PCs — so it was quite sane assumption: „let's take they have just cheapest VGAs and let's not assume there is any acceleration available”.
Only then, when accelerated VGAs became cheaper — and when Windows 95 became so popular — yes, they started to take advantage of that acceleration, but through DirectX.

No, what mattered was that you said that if you had the "raw power", you wouldn't bother to put blitters in the machine.
Guess what, they did. Even when games didn't use them.